Jianguo (Jack) Liu is a sustainability scientist, human-environment scientist, and ecologist. He has pioneered systems integration for sustainability (e.g., integration of ecology with social sciences, policy, and technology for understanding and promoting global sustainability) ^[1]. He has opened up and advanced new fields of interdisciplinary research. He coined the term “telecoupling” (socioeconomic-environmental interactions over distances) ^[2] – an umbrella concept that expands and integrates various disciplinary concepts of distant interactions such as animal migration, human migration, trade, investment, technology transfer, knowledge transfer, climatic teleconnection, and disease spread. He has been leading international efforts in developing and applying the award-winning telecoupling framework ^[3] to disentangle the complexity and effects of globalization, climate and environmental change, human activities, urbanization, and natural disasters in one place on distant places worldwide. He and his team have discovered powerful hidden driving forces such as divorce ^[4]  and household proliferation ^[5] behind global biodiversity and resource consumption, as well as unexpected ecological degradation in flagship protected areas ^[6]. 

Liu’s contributions to the fundamental understanding of major global challenges have profound implications for global sustainable development ^[7][8]. His innovative research has been translated into effective policy and practice for solving pressing environmental challenges, especially conservation of a global wildlife icon (giant pandas) ^[6], management of protected areas ^[9], large-scale conservation programs ^[10], and environmental protection ^[11] in China that shape the sustainability of planet Earth and humanity. He has also amplified the impacts of his research through promoting international collaborations and communications ^[12], and through nurturing generations of students and junior scholars ^[13] globally.

Liu was born in Hunan Province, Southern China, in 1963. He received a B.S. in plant protection at Hunan Agricultural University in 1983, an M.S. in ecology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing in 1986, and a PhD in ecology (with focus on ecological economics) from the University of Georgia in 1992. He did his postdoctoral study at Harvard University during 1992-1994.

Liu joined the faculty of Michigan State University in 1995. He has been the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability since 2004 and University Distinguished Professor since 2005. In 2004, he became the founding director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability.

Liu was a visiting scholar (on sabbatical) at Stanford University (2001-2002), Harvard University (2008), and Princeton University (2009). He has also been a research affiliate with the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor since 2002.

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