Junguo LIU, Chair Professor of the School of Environmental Science and Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), was recently elected to the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW).

Benoît Dubuis, President of SATW, Christofer Hierold, Chairman of the Nomination Committee, and Esther Koller, Secretary General (ad interim), sent a congratulatory letter to Prof. Junguo LIU on becoming a member of SATW in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to the linkage of climate scenarios, risk assessment in the area of water and the necessary hydraulic-engineering measures.

Prof. Junguo LIU, a recipient of the Outstanding Young Scientist from the National Science Foundation of China, is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Geographical Society, UK, and the Royal Meteorological Society.

He graduated from ETH Zurich and worked for two years as a postdoctoral/research scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag).

He has long been engaged in scientific research and teaching on water resources and ecological restoration. In the protection and utilization of water resources, he proposed the three-dimensional water scarcity assessment and the stepwise ecological restoration mode.

Prof. LIU has published more than 270 papers in domestic and international journals such as Science, Nature, PNAS, Nature Climate Change, Nature Communications, Nature Sustainability, and Science Advances. He has also been selected in the list of the world’s Highly Cited Researchers.

He founded two ecological restoration organizations in China: The Society for Ecological Rehabilitation of Beijing (SERB), founded in 2014, and the Union of Societies for Ecological Restoration and Environmental Protection (USEREP), founded in 2016. He is also the first and second President of SERB, and the Chair of USEREP.

He also serves as the lead author of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Vice Chairman of the China National Committee of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS), and a member of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Association for Science and Technology (BAST).

Prof. LIU is also the recipient of the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) Award, Paul A. Witherspoon Lecture of the American Geophysical Union, Outstanding Young Scientist Award by the European Geosciences Union (EGU), Communication Award from the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), Young Scientists Award from the Ministry of Education of China, and China Youth Science and Technology Award.

The SATW has long been committed to promoting the innovation of engineering science, the development of related technologies, and the public’s understanding of such technologies, and encouraging young people to devote themselves to scientific and technological innovation to make outstanding contributions to the development of engineering in Switzerland.

In 2022, thirteen new members were selected to SATW, and the list for its 2023 members will be announced in due course. At present, there are about 330 members of the academy.