Awards

Titled Professor - 2018 - 2022

James H. Rudy Professor

About Chen-Yu Liu

Chen-Yu Liu is a Rudy Professor of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington. She received her B.S. in 1998 from the National Taiwan University and Ph.D. in 2002 from Princeton University.

Her research focuses on symmetry tests and fundamental neutron physic to understand matter creation and nucleosynthesis in the early Universe.

She specializes in experimental tools using Ultra-Cold Neutrons (UCN).

In her dissertation work, she solved the critical issue of excessive loss of UCN due to upscattering by para-D2 molecules in solid D2 and made the world's first working solid deuterium source for UCN production. This breakthrough prompted the investments of several multi-million dollar UCN facilities around the world, including LANL, the PULSTAR reactor at NCSU, and the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI). Liu joined the IU physics department in 2005. She studied the magnetic excitations in cryogenic oxygen solids for UCN production in the Lujan Center of Neutron Scattering. In 2011--2016, she led the UCNtau experiment, as a co-spokesperson; the experiment holds the record of the most precise measurement of the neutron lifetime. In 2018, Liu won an NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant to construct a room-temperature apparatus for improving the measurement of the neutron electric dipole moment.

Liu was selected as a Sloan Research Fellow in 2007, a Rosen Scholar in 2016, and elected as an APS fellow in 2018. In 2008, she won the IU Trustees Teaching Excellence Recognition Award and Joseph and Sophia Konopinski Prize, awarded in recognition of excellence in teaching physics. She also lectured on principles of fundamental neutron physics at summer schools around the world. She is a frequent panelist and consultant for the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy and has served on panels to plan fundamental neutron research programs in the US and outside.