Field of Expertise:
Aerosol

Did You Know?
During his undergrad days at the University of Nebraska, Liu placed second in an intramural ping-pong tournament. In 2012, he suffered a stroke. Today, he plays the best tennis he's ever played.

In His Own Words:
"The scientific advances in the last 20 to 30 years have been so enormous; we can now do things we couldn't think about doing before. Rather than waiting 20 years to see if something will work, now you can let a computer run overnight and you'll have an answer in the morning. Anyone who has an interest and aptitude to do scientific work, this will be a great field for them to get into."

 

 

 

 

Benjamin Y.H. Liu:
How he has transformed the scene

Studying the finer things in life
We tend to think of aerosols only when we purchase hair spray or cleaning supplies. But aerosols —particles so small the largest is the width of a human hair — are all around us, adrift in our atmosphere. Dr. Benjamin Y.H. Liu has dedicated his career to studying aerosols and fine particles, a subject of growing importance in areas of air pollution, occupational and environmental health, global warming, nuclear safety and nanotechnology.

Liu joined the faculty of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota in 1960, after earning his Ph.D. in solar energy. In 1962, he began his aerosol research and over the next 42 years, helped to build the university's Particle Technology Laboratory to a world-renowned center for aerosol and fine particle studies. Liu was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1987 for his contribution to aerosol and solar energy research. In 1995, he was named a Regents' Professor, the highest academic honor given to a faculty member at the University of Minnesota.

In 2002, Liu retired from the university and became president and chief executive officer of MSP Corporation, a company he co-founded with his wife and a U of M colleague. At MSP, he continues his aerosol research, making new inventions and creating new products for commercial applications. Among the company's products are aerosol sampling and measuring instruments, devices for testing medical inhalers used for the treatment of asthma and other diseases, and semiconductor and contamination control products. MSP has around 140 U.S. and foreign patents, and their products are sold to companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

No high school degree, but smart enough for a doctorate
Liu was born in Shanghai, China in 1934, the only child of Wilson Wang-Su Liu and Dorothy Pao-Ning Cheng. His parents came to the United States for a college education in the 1920s, and then both returned to China to teach at the University of Shanghai, where they met and married.

During the Sino-Japanese war, and the years immediately before and after, China was in great turmoil. Liu moved around China with his parents for their own safety, first to Hong Kong, then to Suzhou in the coastal province of Jiangsu, Lanzhou in the Gansu Province in northwestern China, then back to Hong Kong and on to Taiwan. Because of the constant movement, he never officially graduated from the all the schools he attended, but he did manage to pass the competitive entrance exam and get accepted into the National Taiwan University, where he first majored in physics, then in mechanical engineering. He came to the United States in 1955 after three years of college in Taiwan and finished his final year at the University of Nebraska, where he received a B.S in mechanical engineering in 1956 — his first official degree.

In 1960, he earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota. While working on his doctorate, he married his college sweetheart, Helen Hai-Ling Cheng, a girl from Shanghai who also was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. They have a son.

Liu's list of honors, achievements and involvements is impressive: He is the recipient of the Fuchs' Prize, the highest recognition in the aerosol field; the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) named the Benjamin Y.H. Liu Award after him; he received the Distinguished Engineer Award of the Minnesota Society of Professional Engineers and the Minnesota Federation of Engineering Society; he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Filtration and Separation Society. Liu is a founding father of the AAAR and the society's journal, Aerosol Science and Technology, and helped establish the International Aerosol Research Assembly. And that's just to name a few.

At the age of 78, Liu embraces each day. He loves his routine, and wouldn't want to live anywhere else but in Minnesota. He also say he won't ever retire.