Two scholars from SUSTech were recently elected as Members of Academia Europaea. They are Junguo LIU, a Chair Professor from the School of Environmental Science and Engineering (ESE) and Didier Sornette, a Co-dean from the Institute of Risk Analysis, Prediction, and Management (Risks-X). In 2020, a total of 361 international scholars were invited to accept new membership.
The Academia Europaea (formed in 1988) is the pan-European academy of science, humanities, and letters. Current membership stands at around 4,000. Amongst them, there are 72 Nobel Laureates, several of whom were elected to the Academia before they received the prize.
Chair Professor Junguo LIU is the first full-time scholar in SUSTech that is elected as a Member of Academia Europaea. He is also the first recipient of the National Science Fund for Outstanding Young Scholar in SUSTech. Prof. Liu’s primary research interests include hydrology and water resources, global environmental change, and ecological restoration. He has earned an excellent international reputation through his contributions to the fields of water resources research and ecological restoration. Prof. Liu has led pioneering work on advancing water resources assessment in coupled human-natural systems. He has incorporated water resources quantity, quality, and environmental flow requirements for global hydrology research and water scarcity assessments. He has extensive working experience in countries like China, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S.
Prof. Liu is the author of over 170 scientific publications. In recognition of his outstanding work, he won the Outstanding Young Scientist Award of the European Geosciences Union in 2009, and he was the first hydrologist in the world to receive this award. He also received the ProSPER.Net-Scopus Young Scientist Award (2011), the Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the National Natural Science Foundation in China (2016), the 2017 Communication Award of the International Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), the Young Scientists Award from the Ministry of Education of China (2018), the Beijing Science and Technology Award (2nd Prize) by Beijing Municipal Government (2018), the Special Allowance of State Council (2018)，and the Science and Technology Award for Chinese Youth (2019).
Professor Didier Sornette is a member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW), a professor on the Chair of Entrepreneurial Risks at ETH Zurich, and also a Full Professor of Entrepreneurial Risks at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics at ETH Zurich. He is also the director of the Financial Crisis Observatory, co-founder of the ETH Risk Center, and a member of the Swiss Finance Institute. He is also an Elected Fellow of the World Innovation Foundation (WIF). In 2013, he was elected to the rank of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow.
Professor Sornette is a world-class expert in complex systems and extreme risk management. He uses rigorous data-driven statistical analysis methods to identify, control, and predict system instability and extreme events. His research applies to all scientific fields and numerous applications, including earthquake predictions, financial instabilities, nuclear risk, cyber risk, social networks, and medical sciences. He has published over 800 articles in international journals and nine books, with 44,000 Google Scholar citations and 101 H-index.
