Chen-Ching Liu named American Electric Power Professor

Chen-Ching Liu, professor of electrical engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, was named the American Electric Power Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The American Electric Power professorship was established to recognize excellence in the field of electrical power systems.

Liu, who joined the Virginia Tech in January, was the Boeing Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at Washington State University. He has also served as professor of electrical engineering and associate dean of engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle; the Palmer Chair Professor at Iowa State University; and professor and acting/deputy principal of the College of Engineering, Mathematics, and Physical Sciences at University College Dublin, Ireland.

At Virginia Tech, Liu serves as the director of the Center for Power and Energy and will further grow the power system program in the College of Engineering that has a long tradition of accomplishments and worldwide reputation. 

He is internationally recognized for his pioneering research in intelligent system methodologies for power systems. Liu’s work on power system restoration in transmission and distribution systems led to practical tools for the power industry through Electric Power Research Institute and Pacific Northwest National Lab.

Liu has 142 publications in major technical journals, 28 invited book chapters, 162 conference papers, and three edited books. In his 34 years as a professor, he has supervised 36 Ph.D. students and more than 50 master’s degree students.

In 1994, Liu was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He received the Presidential Young Investigator’s Award from the National Science Foundation in 1986 and the IEEE Power and Energy Society Outstanding Power Engineering Educator Award in 2004. He also received an honorary doctorate from the Polytechnic University Bucharest, Romania, in 2013 and was inducted as a member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences in 2014.

Liu has served in leadership positions in several international communities of power system engineering, including as a member of the Governing Board of the IEEE Power and Energy Society, founding president of the International Council of Intelligent System Applications to Power Systems, and as chair of the IEEE Power and Energy Society Fellow Committee and Technical Committee on Power System Computing, Analysis, and Economics.

Liu received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.