Philip Liu

School of Civil and Environment Engineering, Cornell University

Philip Liu is the “Class of 1912” professor of Engineering and the Director of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University, where he joined the faculty 1974. He earned a B.S. degree in civil engineering from National Taiwan University in 1968, a S.M. in civil engineering (1971) and a Sc.D. in hydrodynamics (1974) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His research interests include a wide range of topics in fluid mechanics and water wave theories, including: tsunamis, free surface tracking, wave-structure interaction, wave-seafloor interactions, sediment transport, wave breaking, and internal waves. During his sabbatical leaves and short-term leaves from Cornell, Professor Liu has worked at various consulting firms, government laboratories and universities in California, Delaware, the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Norway, Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, Germany, Taiwan and Italy.

He is a Fellow of American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). He has received numerous awards for his research accomplishments, including a J.S. Guggenheim Fellwoship Award, Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (ASCE), John G. Moffatt & Frank E. Nichol Harbor and Coastal Engineering Award (ASCE), International Coastal Engineering Research Award (ASCE), National Science Council Chair Professorship, Taiwan in 2008 and Kwoh-Ting Li Chair Professorship (National Central University, Taiwan) in 2007.

Links

 

Sample publications

  • Liu, P. L.-F. (1990) Wave transformation. In The Sea: Ocean Engineering Sciences, Vol. 9 (ed. by B. LeMehaute and D. Hanes), Wiley & Sons.
  • Mei, C.C. and Liu, P. L.-F. (1993) Surface waves and coastal dynamics. Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech., 25: 215–40, doi:10.1146/annurev.fl.25.010193.001243.
  • Yeh, H., Liu, P.L.-F., Briggs, M. and Synolakis, C. (1994) Propagation and amplification of tsunamis at coastal boundaries. Nature, 372: 353–355, doi:10.1038/372353a0.
  • Liu, P. L.-F., Lynett, P., Fernando, H., Jaffe, B. E., Fritz, H., Higman, B., Morton, R., Goff, J., and Synolakis, C. (2005) Observations by the international tsunami survey team in Sri Lanka. Science, 308(5728): 1595, doi:10.1126/science.1110730.
  • Liu P. L-F. (2008) Tsunami modeling – Propagation, Chapter 9 in The Sea, Vol. 15 (ed. Robinson, A. and Bernard, E.) Harvard University Press.