Rate My Professor Liping Yu

Liping Yu, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Central Florida, joined the department in fall 2023 under the university's Semiconductor Initiative. Before arriving at UCF, he held the position of Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Maine. Yu's academic journey began with a B.S. degree from Zhejiang University in 1999, followed by an M.S. from the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics in 2002, and culminated in a Ph.D. in physics from North Carolina State University in 2009. Following his doctoral studies, he contributed five years to the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Frontier Research Center for Inverse Design, serving initially as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and later as an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. He then spent three years as a Research Assistant Professor at Temple University within the DOE Energy Frontier Research Center for the Computational Design of Functional Layered Materials.

Yu's research centers on materials theory, modeling, informatics, and design, encompassing solid phase transitions, high-entropy materials, interface and surface phenomena, as well as energy and electronic materials. His expertise lies in semiconductor physics and the innovative design of novel materials for next-generation electronics and sustainable energy solutions. For his outstanding work, Yu was awarded the prestigious NSF CAREER award in 2023. Key publications from his portfolio include: “Intrinsic ferromagnetism and restrictive thermodynamic stability in 2D MA₂N₄ and Janus VSiGeN₄ monolayers,” Physical Review Materials (2022); “Computational functionality-driven design of semiconductors for optoelectronic applications,” InfoMat (2020); “Key role of antibonding electron transfer in bonding on solid surfaces,” Physical Review Materials (2019); “Negative Poisson’s Ratio In 1T-Type Crystalline Transition Metal Dichalcogenides,” Nature Communications (2017); “Bending two-dimensional materials to control charge localization and Fermi-level shift,” Nano Letters (2016); “Prediction and laboratory discovery of new 18-electron ABX compounds and their functionality,” Nature Chemistry (2015); “A polarity-induced defect mechanism for conductivity and magnetism at polar-nonpolar oxide interfaces,” Nature Communications (2014); “Inverse Design of High Absorption Thin-Film Photovoltaic Materials,” Advanced Energy Materials (2013); and “Identification Of Potential Photovoltaic Absorber Materials From First Principles Spectroscopic Material Screening,” Physical Review Letters (2012). These publications underscore his profound influence on the advancement of computational materials science for practical applications.