Sophia B. Liu

Dr. Sophia B Liu is an Innovation Specialist at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Science and Decisions Center focused on participatory science and innovation. She is also the Co-Chair of the Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (CCS) as well as the CCS Coordinator for USGS and the Department of Interior.

She previously worked at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado, the St. Petersburg Coastal Marine Science Center in Florida, and the Energy, Minerals, and Environmental Health programs at the National Center in Virginia as a USGS Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow conducting research on crowdsourcing, citizen science, and civic hacking.

Dr. Liu was also awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship in 2006 conducting research on social media use in disasters. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado, Boulder in an interdisciplinary program called Technology, Media, and Society. She also received a B.A. at University of California, Irvine in Social Science with a minor in Information & Computer Science and in Digital Arts.