Professor Philip Li-Fan Liu is the Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at NUS. Prof Liu is also the Kwoh-Ting Lee Professor (Honorary) at the National Central University, Taiwan, the Honorary Professor at Tsinghua University, China and the Class of 1912 Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at Cornell University in USA.

After graduating with a B.S. in Civil Engineering from National Taiwan University in 1968, Prof Liu studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a S.M. degree in Civil Engineering in 1971 and a ScD degree in 1974. He joined the faculty of Cornell University as an Assistant Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) in 1974. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1979 and Full Professor in 1983. He served as the Associate Director of the School from 1985 to 1986 and as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies at the Engineering College from 1986 to 1987. Prof Liu was the Director of the School of CEE from 1 July 2009 to 30 June 2015. He was the Vice President for Research and Technology at National University of Singapore from August 2015 to July 2019.

Prof Liu is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in USA, an Academician of Academia Sinica in Taiwan, a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He has received many academic awards, including the prestigious ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (1978), the J. S. Guggenheim Fellowship (1980), the ASCE John G. Maffatt & Frank N. Nichol Harbor and Coastal Engineering Award (1997), the International Coastal Engineering Award ASCE (2004), the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award (2009) and the International Award for the Enhancement of Tsunami/Coastal Disaster Resilience (2017).

Liu's research interests are in Coastal Oceanography and Engineering. He is an internationally recognized, front-line researcher in the fields of water wave theories, tsunamis dynamics, wave-breaking processes, sediment transport processes, and interactions of water waves with structures. His research approach integrates analytical, computational and experimental methodologies.