About
Dr Liu’s research covers a wide range of topics from microbial fermentation, anaerobic digestion, hydrolysis of organic wastes, membrane filtration to wastewater treatment and resource recovery as well as life cycle assessment. She has undertaken many projects sponsored by the Singapore National Environment Agency, the Singapore Environment and Water Industry Programme, the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, EPSRC and BBSRC. She also conducted projects from the industry for technology demonstration and scaling-up. Currently, she is responsible for the experimental part of an anaerobic digestion project worth £1.4 million funded by EPSRC and led by the University of Surrey.
Dr. Liu has published approximately 100 peer-reviewed journal papers with an H-index of 34 and over 4300 citations (Google Scholar). She is the author of three book chapters titled “Aerobic treatment of organic compounds in wastewater”, “Biological phosphoru removal processes”, and “Combusion, pyrolysis and gasification of sewage sludge for energy recovery”. Dr. Liu is an editorial board member/associate editor for journals Processes and Frontier in Energy Research, respectively, meanwhile, she is a technical reviewer serving for a number of international journals for years. Dr. Liu is also an active reviewer of research proposals for BBSRC, EPSRC, Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Society and research councils in Canada, Finland, Switzerland, Croatia etc.
Dr Liu has an established and growing international reputation evidenced by being listed by Standford University as the top 2% of the world's leading scientists from 2020 to 2023.
Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Municipal and industrial wastewater treatment
- Biofilm
- Anaerobic digestion
- Resource recovery from wastes
- Industrial fermentation for chemicals, materials and biofuels
Current research
- Municipal and industrial wastewater treatment
- Biofilm for wastewater treatment and industrial fermentation
- Anarobic digestion of energy crops, agricultral wastes, food waste and MSWOF
- Nutrient removal and recovery from wastewater
- Aerobic granular sludge technology
- Biodegradable plastic production from waste streams
- Microbial fermentation
- Application of membrane technology for water/wastewater treatment and resource recovery
- Mechanisms of bacterial aggregation, microbiology fundamentals and modern molecular tools for the research of wastewater or water
Research projects
Active projects
Completed projects
Publications
Teaching
CENV6085 – Waste Resources Management (Co-ordinator and lecturer)
CENV6158 – Wastewater Process Engineering (Co-ordinator and lecturer)
CENV3015 – Design 3 (Lecturer)
CHEG6003 – Reactor Design for Sustainable Processing (Lecturer)
FEEG1002 – Mechanisc, Structure and Materials (Lecturer)
FEEG3003 – Individual Project (Lecturer)
FEEG6012 – MSc Research Project (Lecturer)
External roles and responsibilities
Biography
Dr Liu’s research covers a wide range of topics from microbial fermentation, pyrolysis and gasification of organic wastes to wastewater treatment and resource recovery. She has undertaken many projects sponsored by the Singapore National Environment Agency, the Singapore Environment and Water Industry Programme, the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and BBSRC. She also conducted projects from the industry for technology demonstration and scaling-up.
Dr. Liu has published over 80 peer-reviewed journal papers with an H-index of 32 and over 3800 citations (Google Scholar). She is the author of three book chapters titled “Aerobic treatment of organic compounds in wastewater”, “Biological phosphoru removal processes”, and “Combusion, pyrolysis and gasification of sewage sludge for energy recovery”. Dr. Liu is an editorial board member/associate editor for journals Processes and Frontier in Energy Research, respectively, meanwhile, she is a technical reviewer serving for a number of international journals for years. Dr. Liu is also an active reviewer of research proposals for BBSRC, EPSRC, Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Society and research councils in Canada, Finland, Switzerland, Croatia etc.
Dr Liu has an established and growing international reputation evidenced by being listed by Standford University as the top 2% of the world's leading scientists in recent consecutive years, i.e., 2022, 2021 and 2020.
Prizes
- Science & Technology Progress Award (2006)
- Singapore Millennium Foundation Post-doctoral Fellowship (2005)
- Science and Technology Progress Award (2001)