He received his B.S. from Nankai University in 2009 and Ph.D. from Peking University in 2014. After that, he conducted postdoctoral research at Auburn University (2014–2016) and Georgia Institute of Technology (2016–2017) in the USA. Dr Liu's research interests focus on environmental nanotechnology, materials synthesis and application, water treatment and the transport/transformation of nanomaterials and contaminants. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles and has an h-index of 15.