Recently, Professor Junguo Liu of the School of Environmental Science and Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) was nominated to be a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS).

The RGS is the UK’s learned society and professional body for geography. As a leading centre for geographers and geographical studies, the RGS has made a huge effort to promote ‘advancement for geographical science’. The Society was founded in 1830 with the name of Geographical Society of London (GSI) and later in 1859 it became known for the RGS. For a more systematic study of geography, another institution, the Institute of British Geographers (IBG) was established in 1933 as a sister body to the Society. In 1955, the new Royal Geographical Society was formed with the combination of the RGS and the IBG. The Royal Geographical Society has attracted a number of active researchers and professional geographers , including Charles Darwin, the founder of evolution.

Professor Liu, a famous expert on hydrology and ecological restoration, had made many significant contributions in geography. He was selected as Water Technical Advisory Group Member of the United Nations (4 numbers in total in the world), a Lead Author of the Sixth Assessment Report of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), a target leader of the Decade Program 2013-2022 (Panta Rhei) of the International Association for Hydrological Sciences (IAHS), the Chair of the working group on Water Scarcity Assessment of the Panta Rhei program, and the vice-president of the Chinese Working Committee for the IAHS-Panta Rhei. He established and was elected as the president of the Society for Ecological Rehabilitation of Beijing (SERB) in 2014, which is the first and still the only provincial-level society recognized by the Chinese government on ecological restoration; two years later, he founded the Union of Societies for Ecological Restoration and Environmental Protection (USEREP), a first officially recognized union by Beijing Association of Science and Technology.

Prof. Liu has published more than 130 papers (including over 100 SCI papers) in journals such as Nature, Science, PNAS, Nature Communications, Nature Sustainability and Nature Climate Change, and published 6 books in Chinese or English. The journal articles have been cited more than 5,000 times (Google Scholar).

Thanks to Junguo’s outstanding scientific achievements and extensive services to the hydrological communities worldwide, he received many international awards during past years, including the ProSPER.Net-Scopus Young Scientist Award (2011), the Young Researcher Gold Award by China Science Daily (2012), the Distinguished Young Scientist Award from the National Natural Science Foundation in China (2016), the Communication Award of the International Society for Ecological Restoration (2017 ), the Young Scientists Award (one out of eight in all fields in China) from the Ministry of Education of China (2018), and the Science and Technology Award for Chinese Youth (2019). He was the first SUSTech’s professor who has received the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars.