Jianguo Liu

Biosketch

Jianguo (Jack) Liu is a leading sustainability scholar, ecologist, and human-environment scientist. He is the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability, University Distinguished Professor, and founding director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University (MSU). Liu came to MSU after completing his postdoctoral study at Harvard University. He was also a visiting scholar at Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.

Liu has served on numerous committees and panels (e.g., chair of the National Academies Committee on “Research at Multiple Scales”) and editorial boards of over 20 journals, including Science. He is a past president of IALE-NA (North America Regional Association, International Association for Landscape Ecology), founder and coordinator of the International Network of Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems, and founder and chair of the NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Award Program.

Liu’s numerous awards include the World Sustainability Award, Gunnerus Award in Sustainability Science, Guggenheim Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, and the highest honors from IALE-NA (Distinguished Landscape Ecologist Award) and from the Ecological Society of America (Eminent Ecologist Award). He is a “Highly Cited Researcher” (Clarivate Analytics), “Highly Ranked Scholar” (ScholarGPS), and “Top Cited Scholar” (Scilit).

Research Interests

Liu is a world leader in systems integration for global sustainability (e.g., integration of natural and social sciences, policy, and technology for understanding and promoting global sustainability). He has opened and greatly advanced multiple interdisciplinary frontiers. For example, he has developed and led the global applications of the award-winning framework of metacoupling that integrates human-nature interactions within systems (intracoupling), between adjacent systems (pericoupling), and between distant systems (telecoupling), which has been adopted to address humanity’s pressing challenges across scales, including by the United Nations. A new initiative is exploring Anywhere2Everywhere – cascading mechanisms and impacts of events such as human activities and climate change in one place on other places worldwide.

Liu has led the discovery and elucidation of many unexpected global challenges, such as household proliferation despite depopulation, which upended the conventional use of population size as a main measure of human environmental impact. He has revealed the surprising degradation of habitat in “flagship” protected areas for iconic giant pandas, which catalyzed a global reevaluation of protected area management. He has also uncovered hidden connections between seemingly unrelated issues such as divorce and environmental impacts.

Liu’s groundbreaking findings have illuminated transformative pathways for sustainability, including recovered panda habitat and biodiversity, better environment and ecosystem services, and improved human well-being.