Jiango 'Jack' Liu

Endowed Chairs University Distinguished Professors College of Agriculture and Natural Resources

• Rachel Carson Chair in Ecological Sustainability, University Distinguished Professor

• Fisheries and Wildlife
• MSU AgBioResearch

Bio

A human-environment scientist and sustainability scholar, Jianguo "Jack" Liu holds the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability, is University Distinguished Professor of fisheries and wildlife at Michigan State University and serves as director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability.

Liu takes a holistic approach to addressing complex human-environmental challenges through systems integration, which means he integrates multiple disciplines such as ecology and social sciences, often in novel and pioneering ways. His work evolves from decades of study of interactions between panda and people in southwestern China, work that is credited with supporting the downgrading of giant pandas from endangered to threatened. He connects seemingly unconnected issues, for example divorce and environmental sustainability. 

Liu is a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science Magazine and is a coordinating lead author of the global assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services organized by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. He founded the International Network of Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems.

 Liu has been elected to the American Philosophical Society, named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has received the Guggenheim Fellowship Award, the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation and the Sustainability Science Award and the Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowship from the Ecological Society of America.

Liu received his Phd from the University of Georgia and completed postdoctoral work at Harvard University. He has been a visiting scholar at Stanford, Harvard and Princeton universities.