Biographical sketch

Xiaowei Liu is a Cheung Kong Scholar and professor of astronomy at Peking University. He received college education at Peking University in astrophysics and received his PhD degree in 1992 from the Beijing Astronomical Observatory (now the National Astronomical Observatories), Chinese Academy of Sciences. He then joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, first as a postdoctoral, then as a senior research fellow. He joined the faculty of Department of Astronomy of Peking University in 2000. He is currently serving as a Vice President of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

Homepage: http://kiaa.pku.edu.cn/?q=faculty/xiaowei-liu

Research Interests

Professor Liu's main research interest is spectroscopic study of emission line nebulae, with an emphasis on the physical processes and radiative mechanisms governing photoionized gaseous nebulae. Studies of emission line nebulae yield information of stellar nucleosynthesis and the enrichment of the interstellar medium, and of the chemical evolution of galaxies. Currently, Prof. Liu is leading a large spectroscopic survey towards the Galactic anticenter with the newly built Chinese Large Sky Area Multi-object Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST, also named the Guoshoujing Telescope). The survey will collect optical spectra of millions of stars and provide a unique data set to study the stellar populations, kinematics and chemistry of the Galactic disk(s) and to unravel the assemblage history of the Milky Way as an archetypical grand-design (barred) spiral galaxy.