About

Dr. Chuan Liao is Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. As a human-environment scientist, his research interest lies at the intersection of environment, development, and justice. He obtained his BS in Resource Science at Beijing Normal University in 2010, and MS and PhD in Natural Resources at Cornell University in 2012 and 2015. His postdoctoral journey took him to the University of Michigan, where he was a research fellow from 2015 to 2018. Subsequently, he held a position as Assistant Professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University until 2022. His research program aims at better understanding how development innovations in institution and technology affect human-environment wellbeing. Specific domains include agrifood system innovation, sustainable energy transition, global dryland sustainability, and climate change adaptation. He develops and applies integrated approaches to study human-environment interactions by linking statistical, spatial, and other quantitative methods. He has published his work in Development & Change, Ecological Economics, Global Environmental Change, Landscape Ecology, Nature Food, Science, among other journals. He was editor-in-chief of World Development in 2021 and 2022, and sits on the editorial board of Journal of Peasant Studies. He is a coordinating lead author of the Transformative Change Assessment of Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Agriculture.