Y. A. Liu is Alumni Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, and a Fellow of AIChE and AAAS. He received B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in ChE from National Taiwan University, Tufts University and Princeton University.
Liu has been a design teacher and mentor for five decades, and his excellence was honored by the ASEE Fred Merryfield Design Award, AIChE Outstanding Student Chapter Advisor Award, and a Carnegie Foundation U.S. Professors of the Year Award.
Liu and 10 of his Ph.D. students have made lasting educational influences by publishing their research insights in 9 volumes of pioneering textbooks. These include the first ChE textbooks on AI and neural networks, industrial water savings, design of adsorptive and chromatographic separation processes, modeling and optimization of petroleum refining and step-growth polymerization processes, and integrated process modeling, advanced control and machine learning for optimizing polyolefin manufacturing.
Liu has made notable impacts on the sustainable design education and practice through his published methodologies on plastics recycling, CO2 capture, energy and water savings, and process synthesis and intensification. AIChE honored his work by the Process Development Research Award, and Professional Achievement Award for Innovations in Green Process Engineering.
Since 1986, Liu has devoted his university breaks to helping industries with sustainable design training. He was the founder and instructor of the SINOPEC and PetroChina Simulation Training Centers in Beijing, co-sponsored by Aspen Technology and Virginia Tech. Liu and his trained instructors have taught 7,500 practicing engineers, for which he received awards from Virginia’s Governor and China’s Premier.