Materials society pays tribute to Zi-Kui Lui with honorary symposium

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) celebrated the career of Zi-Kiu Liu, the Dorothy Pate Enright Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State, with an honorary symposium recognizing his impact on the fields of computational materials science and materials design.

TMS hosts highly selective honorary symposia organized to recognize distinguished members of the minerals, metals and materials community. TMS held the honorary symposium, “Materials Genome, CALPHAD, and a Career over the Span of 20, 50, and 60 Years: An FMD/SMD Symposium in Honor of Zi-Kui Liu,” in March 2023 at the society’s annual meeting and exposition in San Diego. The symposium honoring Liu was one of five held at the 2023 meeting.

“TMS is the first professional society that I joined in 1993,” said Liu. “Since joining the Penn State faculty, I have attended all TMS annual meetings and benefited tremendously from the opportunities of interacting with and learning from all stakeholders in the scientific community. Those meetings enabled me to develop a broad range of collaborations through volunteering in various capacities including serving on committees, divisions, board of directors, and organizing symposia. TMS has helped build my research portfolio and to grow with my peers, and thus it is a great milestone to be honored by TMS. The honorary symposia also provided me with an opportunity to thank the many people who supported me over the years.”

This symposium was designed to applaud the impact of Liu on the fields of computational materials science and materials design on the occasion of his 60th birthday, the 20th anniversary of Liu coining the term “Materials Genome”, and the progress of computational thermodynamics (CALPHAD) in the last 50 years as the foundation of materials design.

To honor the broad range of Liu’s research on metals, ceramics, battery materials and 2D materials, the symposium highlighted work that integrates theory with computational and experimental investigations and that utilizes a multidisciplinary approach.

Liu’s research interests focus on the modeling and design of a wide range of materials chemistry and processing through integrating first-principles calculations, statistic mechanics, thermodynamic/kinetic modeling and critically designed experiments for structural and functional applications. He is a leader in computational materials design, which utilizes computational tools such as databases and machine learning to help design the materials of tomorrow. He coined the term “Materials Genome” in 2002 and co-founded the NSF Center for Computational Materials Design in 2005, focusing on the important building blocks of engineered materials.

Liu has published more than 600 papers, given more than 1000 invited presentations, and graduated 31 doctoral students. He has received numerous awards for his accomplishments and holds executive positions in materials science organizations, including as a TMS fellow, companies and journals.

Prior to joining Penn State’s faculty in 1999, Liu worked as a research associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and as a senior research scientist at Questek Innovating LLC, where he developed the design criterion for the molten-oxide-based flame extinction that enabled QuesTek to design and SpaceX to fully develop the burn-resistant nickel superalloy, SX500, that serves as the central enabler of the concept of the Raptor Engine for the Mars Starship.

Liu received a bachelor’s degree in metallurgy from Central South University in China, his master’s degree in materials engineering from the University of Science and Technology Beijing, and his doctorate in physical metallurgy from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.

TMS is a professional association that connects minerals, metals, and materials scientists and engineers who work in industry, academia, and government positions around the world. TMS currently supports more than 12,000 professional and student members on six continents.