A professor who will teach in Slovenia as a Fulbright American scholar
While the rest of us have been participating in the usual summer activities for the past few months, Professor Yu “David” Liu has developed a more special hobby: learning Slovenian.
Liu — a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at Binghamton University’s Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Sciences — will spend the fall semester researching and teaching at University of Maribor in Slovenia as a Fulbright American Scholar.
The US State Department program offers hundreds of awards each year in more than 135 countries to US citizens for teaching, research, and professional projects around the world. Alumni include 61 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize Winners, 76 MacArthur Scholars, and thousands of leaders and world-renowned professionals in academia and many other fields in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.
“It is open to all disciplines, including humanities, social sciences, other sciences and engineering,” Liu said. “He’s also very competitive, so that really surprised me. I’m so glad that the Fulbright has decided to give this award to computing—and to me, I guess!”
Liu’s research includes software engineering, programming languages, and autonomous systems, with sustainable computing as a key theme across all topics. In 2011, he earned a $479,391 National Science Foundation CAREER award for his work on energy-aware and energy-efficient software.
Citing just two examples where efficiency could help reduce our carbon footprint, he points to data centers that use 1 to 2% of the electricity generated in the US, as well as the energy needed to charge millions of cell phones and other mobile devices.
Liu also hopes to learn something from the Slovenians. in 2018, National Geographic the magazine declared Slovenia the most sustainable country in the world; The European Union rated its capital Ljubljana as the most sustainable capital of the Union. Among the country’s policies are sustainable tourism, transport and architectural policies that include robust recycling and energy conservation efforts.
“Sustainable computing is something I’m passionate about, and it’s exciting to do more research on it and spread the word to students in a new country,” Liu said. “Fulbright is about academic exchange as well as cultural exchange, and on topics like how to build a sustainable society, there’s a lot to learn from them and pass on what I know.”
According to the Fulbright Program, exchange experiences like Liu’s lead to greater international co-publishing, ongoing international exchange, and stronger cross-cultural communication skills. Liu hopes to find colleagues, future Binghamton University students and possibly even research funding during his four-month stay in Slovenia, but he’s also excited about the less tangible benefits of immersing himself in another culture.
“With today’s technology, you can meet anyone on Zoom,” he said. “Even if you don’t go to conferences, you can communicate and collaborate or do distance courses, but there is a difference when you live there and interact with local researchers and students for a long time. Only then can you truly understand what the mindset is like, the unique things you can learn and how you can help.”