In this series, ChEnected introduces readers to the recipients of AIChE’s 2025 Institute and Board of Directors’ Awards. These high honorees are nominated by the chemical engineering community and voted upon by the members of AIChE’s Awards Committee.
AIChE’s Warren K. Lewis Award is named for one of the founders of the chemical engineering discipline. The prize is sponsored by ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, and recognizes distinguished and continuing contributions to chemical engineering education.
The 2025 Warren K. Lewis Award is being presented to Y.A. Liu, Alumni Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech. Dr. Liu is being honored "for 51 years of excellence in sustainable design education and practice, student mentoring, pioneering textbooks, creative scholarship, and leadership in innovative engineering training for sustainability”.
Dr. Liu and the other Institute and Board of Directors’ Award honorees will receive their prizes at the 2025 AIChE Annual Meeting, November 2–6 in Boston, Massachusetts.
About Y. A. Liu
Y. A. Liu was named Alumni Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech and is a Fellow of both AIChE and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He earned his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from National Taiwan University, Tufts University, and Princeton University, respectively.
Liu has been a design teacher and mentor for five decades, guiding generations of students. His excellence in teaching has been recognized with honors including the ASEE Fred Merryfield Design Award, the AIChE Outstanding Student Chapter Advisor Award, and the Carnegie Foundation’s U.S. Professors of the Year Award.
At the center of his Lewis Award recognition are Liu’s pioneering textbooks and lasting educational contributions. Together with 10 of his PhD students, he has published nine volumes that extend their research insights to the broader field. These include the first chemical engineering textbooks on AI and neural networks, industrial water savings, adsorptive and chromatographic separations, petroleum refining, step-growth polymerization, and integrated process modeling, advanced control, and machine learning for polyolefin manufacturing.
Liu has also advanced sustainable design education and practice through his methodologies on plastics recycling, CO₂ capture, energy and water savings, and process synthesis and intensification.
Honors and recognition
AIChE has recognized these achievements with the Process Development Research Award and the Professional Achievement Award for Innovations in Green Process Engineering. He has also received awards from Virginia’s Governor and China’s Premier for his training of industry professionals.
Beyond academia, Liu has devoted his university breaks since 1986 to training industry professionals in sustainable design. He founded the SINOPEC and PetroChina Simulation Training Centers in Beijing, co-sponsored by Aspen Technology and Virginia Tech. Through these programs, Liu and his trained instructors have taught more than 7,500 practicing engineers.
This fall, ChEnected is presenting a series that profiles all the 2025 Institute and Board of Directors’ Award recipients. Visit ChEnected regularly to meet the honorees.
