Jianguo "Jack" Liu named to National Academy of Sciences
Jianguo “Jack” Liu, a Michigan State University ecologist, sustainability scientist, human-environment scientist and panda conservation scholar, has been elected to the esteemed National Academy of Sciences.
Liu is the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability and a University Distinguished Professor in the department of fisheries and wildlife. He is the founder and director of MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability and a member of MSU’s Ecology, Environment, and Behavior Program and the Environmental Science and Policy Program.
Liu was one of only 120 members and 30 international members elected to NAS in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. He is joined by University Distinguished Professors G. Philip Robertson, ecosystem science, and Christoph Benning, biochemistry and molecular biology.
Liu has been a trailblazer in understanding and seeking solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems by integrating the needs of both humans and nature.
His work on understanding the complex interactions in the giant panda habitat in the remote mountains of southwestern China has evolved into a pioneering career in systems integration for global sustainability -- the integration of natural and social sciences, policy, and technology for understanding and promoting global environmental sustainability. It also contributed to transforming long-term losses of panda habitat to recovery while improving the well-being of the people who live across the panda distribution range.
“I am deeply honored to be amongst the many colleagues I have admired and had the pleasure to work with at Michigan State University and beyond,” Liu said. “The tremendous community of the academy is a powerful source of support as we together face significant challenges and opportunities for our country and our world. MSU has been a wonderful place to teach and discover. I am most grateful to the fantastic MSU students, staff, faculty, and administrators as well as collaborators in other institutions and funding agencies for their excellent support and help over the past three decades.”
He has opened and greatly advanced new interdisciplinary frontiers with the award-winning frameworks of telecoupling and metacoupling, powerful tools applied across the world that have uncovered hidden and complex cascading impacts of human activities in specific places on sustainability elsewhere globally. His innovative work has been adopted by not only the scientific community but also government agencies and international organizations such as the United Nations.
"Dr. Liu is a leading thinker in sustainability and ecology, and his election to the elite National Academy of Sciences is well-deserved," said Matthew Daum, interim dean. "The College of Agriculture and Natural Resources is grateful for his leadership over the last three decades, and I know that future generations of Spartans will continue to build on his work."
Liu has been recognized with many other prestigious honors and awards. In 2021 he received the World Sustainability Award, which cited his success in opening up new frontiers in sustainability and advancing the fundamental understanding of global challenges such as telecoupling (socioeconomic-environmental interactions over distances).
In 2022, he received the Eminent Ecologist Award, the highest honor from the Ecology Society of America for building interdisciplinary bridges in sustainability science that has strengthened research and sparked significant impact on global conservation efforts.
He is an elected member of American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters; elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Ecological Society of America; and Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow.
“On behalf of the Fisheries and Wildlife Department, I share our entire community’s congratulations with Jack!” said Dana Infante, chair of the department of fisheries and wildlife. “This is a well-deserved honor for a career’s worth of ground-breaking science with on the ground impacts. Jack’s work uses innovative approaches to show us interactions between human and natural systems. These outcomes reveal how we can meet needs of society while also conserving natural systems - the key to sustainability! Again, we are thrilled for Jack!”
Liu has been a part of many national and international committees and panels. He has served on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science, as a coordinating lead author of the global assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services organized by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and as the chair of the National Academies’ Committee on Research across Multiple Scales (from molecular to global scales).
