Andrea Jo-Wei Liu (born 1962) is the Hepburn Professor of Physics at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, where she holds a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry. She is a theoretical physicist studying

condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid State of matter, phases, that arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms and elec ...

and

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...

.. She is particularly known for her study of jamming, a phenomenon in which disordered materials become rigid with increasing density and stress. She is a

Simons Investigator The Simons Foundation is an American private foundation established in 1994 by Marilyn and James Harris Simons, Jim Simons with offices in New York City. As one of the largest charitable organizations in the United States with assets of over $5 ...

and Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics, fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...

(APS), the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

(AAAS),. the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

, and a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

(NAS).

Academic career

Liu graduated from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

in 1984, and earned a Ph.D. in 1989 from

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

under the supervision of

Michael Fisher Michael Ellis Fisher (3 September 1931 – 26 November 2021) was an English physicist, as well as chemist and mathematician, known for his many seminal contributions to statistical physics, including but not restricted to the theory of phase t ...

. After postdoctoral studies at

Exxon Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the largest direct successor of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the modern company was form ...

and the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...

, she joined the faculty at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

in 1993, and moved to the University of Pennsylvania in 2004. She became the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor in the Natural Sciences in 2009,. before becoming the Hepburn Professor in 2011. Liu was the General Councilor of the American Physical Society (2017-2020). She served on the steering committees for a number of scientific organizations including the APS Board of Directors, the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

(NSF) Committee of Visitors for the Division of Materials Research, the NAS Biophysics Decadal Study Committee, and the National Research Council (NRC) Condensed Matter and Materials Research Committee.

Research contributions

Liu is recognized for distinguished contributions in theoretical physics, particularly for demonstrating that slow relaxation in soft materials can be viewed within a common framework called jamming." She was one of the first scientists to uncover the structural and dynamical features of the jamming transition, a critical phase transition that marks the onset of rigidity in disordered packings. She has also resolved a longstanding question of how disordered solids flow by identifying "flow defects", or regions that are vulnerable to local rearrangement, analogous to dislocations in crystals. According to Google Scholar, Liu's publications have received over 17,000 citations and her

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with success indicators such as winning t ...

is 63.

Awards and honors

Liu has received a significant number of awards and honors which include: * Election to the

(2017) * Simons Investigator in Theoretical Physics (2015) * Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics (2013) * Fellow,

(2012) * Member of the

(2010) * Fellow of the

(2004) * UCLA Herbert Newby McCoy Award (2002) * UCLA

Glenn Seaborg Glenn Theodore Seaborg ( ; April 19, 1912February 25, 1999) was an American chemist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work i ...

Award (2000) * National Science Foundation CAREER Award (1996)

Selected publications

*Landes, F. P., Biroli G., Dauchot O., Liu, A. J., Reichman, D. R. Attractive versus truncated repulsive supercooled liquids: The dynamics is encoded in the pair correlation function. ''Physical Review E'' 101, 010602 (2020)
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevE.101.010602
*Sharp, T.A., Thomas S. L., Cubuk, E. D., Schoenholz, S. S., Srolovitz, D. J., Liu. A. J. Machine learning determination of atomic dynamics at grain boundaries. ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA'' 115(43), 10943 (2018)
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1807176115
*. *. *. *.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Liu, Andrea Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American physicists American women physicists University of California, Berkeley alumni Cornell University alumni University of California, Los Angeles faculty University of Pennsylvania faculty Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences American academics of Chinese descent Simons Investigator American women academics 21st-century American women scientists