Bio
Jia “Peter” Liu is an Associate Professor and the Trey Lauderdale Industrial and Systems Engineering Faculty Fellow at the University of Florida. His research interests include statistical learning, deep learning, and LLM with applications in advanced manufacturing. He focuses on integrating physics knowledge and data-driven machine learning to enhance the understanding of additive manufacturing (particularly process optimization and fatigue performance of laser powder bed fusion). He also works on smart manufacturing and secure manufacturing, with applications in the aerospace, defense, and automotive sectors.
His research has been funded by NSF, DoD, FAA, and NIST. He has published over 40 journal and conference papers and has been honored with several awards, including the 2024 ASME Rising Star of Mechanical Engineering and the 2023 NSF CAREER Award. He is a senior member of INFORMS, a member of IISE, ASME, and SME.
Education
- Ph.D., Industrial and Systems Engineering, Virginia Tech, 2013-2017
- Master’s, Statistics, Virginia Tech, 2015-2016
- Master’s, Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University, 2005-2007
- Bachelor’s, Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University, 2001-2005
Professional Experience
- Associate Professor, University of Florida, 2025-Present
- Associate Professor, Auburn University, 2024-2025
- Assistant Professor, Auburn University, 2019-2024
- Operations Research Analyst, Warner Media, 2017-2019
- Researcher, China Iron & Steel Research Institute Group, 2011-2013
- Control Systems Engineer, Shell (China) Limited, 2007-2011
Selected Awards and Honors
- Trey Lauderdale Industrial & Systems Engineering Faculty Fellow, University of Florida, 2025-2028
- ASME Rising Star of Mechanical Engineering, 2024
- NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award, 2023
- Ginn Faculty Achievement Fellow, Auburn Univeristy, 2023-2025
- Featured research “Layer-wise spatial modeling of porosity in additive manufacturing” in ISE Magazine, January 2019
- Winner of 2018 Data for Hope Hackathon, 2018
- Runner-up in 2017 IBM Service Analytics Challenge (INFORMS Service Science Section), 2017
Professional Society Memberships
- Member of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE)
- Senior Member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
- Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
- Member of SME