Hui-Hai Liu () is a

hydrogeologist Hydrogeology (''hydro-'' meaning water, and ''-geology'' meaning the study of the Earth) is the area of geology that deals with the distribution and movement of groundwater in the soil and rocks of the Earth's crust (commonly in aquif ...

and

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contro ...

engineer. He specializes in fracture hydrology, coupled hydrological and mechanical processes, physics and properties of subsurface multiphase flow and transport, and their applications in

reservoir engineering Reservoir engineering is a branch of petroleum engineering that applies scientific principles to the fluid flow through porous medium during the development and production of oil and gas reservoirs so as to obtain a high economic recovery. The wo ...

and

nuclear waste management Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons ...

Biography

He received a 1983 B.S. in hydraulic machinery from Beijing Agricultural Engineering University, China, and a 1986 MS in fluid engineering from

Huazhong University of Science and Technology The Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST; ) is a public research university located in Guanshan Subdistrict, Hongshan District, Wuhan, Hubei province, China. As a national key university directly affiliated to the Ministry of E ...

, China, with a thesis "An improved singularity method to describe water flow in hydraulic turbines." He then received a Ph.D. in the United States, with a degree in soil physics from

Auburn University Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a public land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama. With more than 24,600 undergraduate students and a total enrollment of more than 30,000 with 1,330 faculty members, Auburn is the second largest uni ...

in 1995 for a thesis "An experimental and numerical study on fingering flow and mixing of variable density contaminants in porous media". He served as an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental System Engineering,

Clemson University Clemson University () is a public land-grant research university in Clemson, South Carolina. Founded in 1889, Clemson is the second-largest university in the student population in South Carolina. For the fall 2019 semester, the university enro ...

from 1995 to 1997 and came to

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

in 1997 as research scientist at

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...

(LBNL). He had served as head of the

Hydrogeology Hydrogeology (''hydro-'' meaning water, and ''-geology'' meaning the study of the Earth) is the area of geology that deals with the distribution and movement of groundwater in the soil and rocks of the Earth's crust (commonly in aquif ...

and Reservoir Dynamics Department at LBNL from 2009 to 2012. Since 2014, he has been with

Aramco Saudi Aramco ( ar, أرامكو السعودية '), officially the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (formerly Arabian-American Oil Company) or simply Aramco, is a Saudi Arabian public petroleum and natural gas company based in Dhahran. , it is one of ...

Research Center.

Research

He has one research monograph and more than 100

peer-review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

ed articles/book chapters published, and made several major original contributions in his areas, including the development of (1) the active fracture model (AFM) that has been used as the base-case theory of flow and transport in unsaturated fractured rock by the

Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, as designated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendments of 1987, is a proposed deep geological repository storage facility within Yucca Mountain for spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioac ...

Project, (2) the two-part Hooke's model (TPHM) by generalizing

Hooke's law In physics, Hooke's law is an empirical law which states that the force () needed to extend or compress a spring (device), spring by some distance () Proportionality (mathematics)#Direct_proportionality, scales linearly with respect to that ...

to incorporate mechanical heterogeneity of natural rocks, and (3) a new multiphase-flow theory based on the optimality principle that fingering multiphase flow in the subsurface is self-organized in such a way that total flow resistance is minimal.

Honors

He became a fellow of the

Geological Society of America The Geological Society of America (GSA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the geosciences. History The society was founded in Ithaca, New York, in 1888 by Alexander Winchell, John J. Stevenson, Charles H. Hitchco ...

in 2007 and a distinguished member of

Society of Petroleum Engineers The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit professional organization whose stated mission is "to collect, disseminate, and exchange technical knowledge concerning the exploration, development and production of oil and ...

in 2017. He is also a recipient of

Emil Truog Emil Truog (March 6, 1884 – December 19, 1969) was an American soil scientist. He received his B.S. Degree (Agriculture), University of Wisconsin,1909 and his M.S. (Chemistry) in 1912. It was in 1912 when he became an instructor in Soil Science ...

soil science award from

Soil Science Society of America The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA), is the largest soil-specific society in the United States. It was formed in 1936 from the merger of the Soils Section of the American Society of Agronomy and the American Soil Survey Association. The So ...

and a Director's award for exceptional achievement from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Liu, Hui-Hai Living people Hydrogeologists 20th-century births Huazhong University of Science and Technology alumni Auburn University alumni Clemson University faculty Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory people Year of birth missing (living people) Fellows of the Geological Society of America