Biography
Professor Liu Bin is Deputy President (Research and Technology) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Prior to her current appointment, she served as Senior Vice Provost (Faculty & Institutional Development) from 2022 to 2023, Vice President (Research and Technology) from 2019 to 2021, and Head of Department at the NUS Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering from 2017 to 2021. She currently holds the appointments of Distinguished Professor and Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor.
Prof Liu Bin graduated with a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Nanjing University, and a PhD in Chemistry from NUS. She received her postdoctoral training at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She joined NUS as an Assistant Professor in 2005, and was promoted to full professorship in 2016.
An internationally acclaimed leader in the field of organic functional materials, Prof Liu Bin has been highly recognised for her contributions in polymer chemistry and applications of organic nanomaterials for biomedical, environmental and energy research. Since 2014, she has been named annually among the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds by Thomson Reuters and the Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate. In 2014, she co-founded LuminiCell, an NUS spin-off company that produces organic luminescent nanoparticles for use in biomedical applications.
Prof Liu Bin has an impressively extensive list of accolades to her name, including the National Science and Technology Young Scientist Award (2008), the L’Oréal Women in Science National Fellowship (2011), the President’s Technology Award (2016), and the American Chemical Society ACS Nano Lectureship Award (2019). In 2021, she bagged the Kabiller Young Investigator’s Award in Nanoscience and Nanomedicine, and the Royal Society of Chemistry Centenary Prize. She was one of 12 women in the world who received the 2023 International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering award.
Prof Liu Bin is a Fellow of the Singapore Academy of Engineering, Singapore National Academy of Sciences, Asia Pacific Academy of Materials, and the Royal Society of Chemistry in Britain. In 2022, she was elected as an international member of the US National Academy of Engineering. She serves on the editorial advisory boards of more than a dozen top peer-reviewed chemistry and materials journals. Since 2019, she has served as Deputy Editor of ACS Materials Letters, launching and developing the flagship materials journal of the American Chemical Society.
At NUS, Prof Liu Bin has been instrumental in the development of vibrant innovation clusters across the University’s colleges, faculties, and schools, including the NUS Sustainability Cluster, as well as the strengthening of efforts to build up and develop the University’s talent pool. She is especially passionate about nurturing the next generation of research leaders and encouraging more women to pursue careers in science and engineering.