Prof. Liu is a professor and president of North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power in China, a Chair Professor of Southern University of Science and Technology, China, and a Senior Guest Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria.

Prof. Liu was elected a Member of Academia Europaea in 2020. He has earned an excellent international reputation for his contributions to the fields of water resources research and ecological restoration, with about 260 papers published in world-known journals, such as Science, Nature, PNAS, Nature Climate Change, Nature Communications, Nature Sustainability, and Science Advances. He is named Highly Cited Researcher from Clarivate. He was listed in the Reuters Hot List of the World’s 1,000 Top Climate Scientists, Stanford University's 2020 World's Top 2% Scientists, and Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researchers.