UC Riverside will welcome Tsu-Jae King Liu, president of the National Academy of Engineering, for a public lecture set for Friday, Feb. 6. Liu’s talk is the inaugural event in the Provost’s Lecture Series, an annual program hosting prominent scholars in the fall, winter, and spring quarters.

“We are honored to host Dr. Liu as our first speaker for this prestigious new series,” said Elizabeth Watkins, UCR provost and executive vice chancellor. “Her groundbreaking work in microelectronics and her visionary leadership in higher education embody the spirit of innovation we strive for at UC Riverside. By bringing national leaders to campus, we are creating a vital forum for our faculty and students to engage, network, and forge collaborations that amplify their work on the national stage.”

Titled “Engineering Leadership in a World of Accelerating Change,” Liu’s talk will begin at 2:15 p.m. in the School of Medicine Education Building 2, Room 106. A fireside chat-style Q&A will follow. Chancellor S. Jack Hu and Christopher Lynch, dean of the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering, will deliver opening remarks.

Liu, who assumed the presidency of the National Academy of Engineering in July 2025, is renowned for her contributions to microelectronics, including co-developing the FinFET transistor design that is used in modern computer chips and smartphones. A Stanford University alumna with a doctorate in electrical engineering, she joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley in 1996. She has served in a range of administrative leadership roles at UC Berkeley, most recently as dean of the College of Engineering from July 2018 through June 2025.

The Provost’s Lecture Series aims to bring distinguished members of the National Academies and the American Academies of Arts, Sciences, and Letters to campus. The series provides a platform for the UCR community to engage with world-class leaders who have shaped their respective fields. 

The speaker for spring quarter will be Jens Ludwig, the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Ludwig is the Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, codirector of the Education Lab, and codirector of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s working group on the economics of crime. The date for this talk will be announced in the coming weeks.

For more information and to register for Dr. Liu’s talk, please visit the UCR Events Calendar.