Rate My Professor Alan Liu

Dr. Alan Liu is a tenured Professor of Engineering Physics in the Department of Physical Sciences at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Daytona Beach campus, a position he has held since 2015 following his tenure as Associate Professor from 2010 to 2015. He earned his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1996, where he previously served as Principal Research Scientist in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1997 to 2010. Dr. Liu manages the Andes Lidar Observatory at Cerro Pachón, Chile, equipped with sodium resonance/fluorescence lidar, airglow imagers, and meteor radar systems to measure atmospheric winds, temperatures, and wave signatures. He also oversees the Space Physics Research Lab. His research focuses on the dynamics and composition of the middle and upper atmosphere, gravity waves, turbulence processes, instabilities, and their relationships to global circulation and space weather. He has advised multiple M.S. and Ph.D. students and teaches courses such as Numerical Methods for Engineers and Scientists, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Physics I and III, and graduate thesis and dissertation supervision.

Dr. Liu received the Abas Sivjee Outstanding Researcher of the Year Award in 2014. He is Principal Investigator on several National Science Foundation grants, including a $1 million award in 2024 to expand the Chilean Observation Network of Meteor Radars (CONDOR) by adding receiver sites in Argentina, seven all-sky cameras, and a Fabry-Perot Interferometer for continuous three-dimensional wind measurements from 70 to 110 km altitude and wave mapping up to 200-300 km. Earlier NSF funding supported meteor radar acquisition and sodium lidar operations at the Andes Lidar Observatory. A Senior Member of the IEEE and member of the American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society, Dr. Liu has authored over 77 peer-reviewed journal publications, accumulating more than 3,400 citations with an h-index of 29. Key publications include “Mesosphere and Lower Thermosphere Wind Perturbations Due To the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai Eruption as Observed by Multistatic Specular Meteor Radars” (2024), “Gravity waves generated by the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption and their global propagation in the mesosphere/lower thermosphere observed by meteor radars” (2024), “Extreme Horizontal Wind Perturbations in the Mesosphere and Lower Thermosphere Over South America Associated With the 2022 Hunga Eruption” (2023), “Comparison of MLT Momentum Fluxes Over the Andes at Four Different Latitudinal Sectors Using Multistatic Radar Configurations” (2022), and “Identifying Gravity Waves Launched by the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai Volcanic Eruption in Mesosphere/Lower-Thermosphere Winds” (2023).