Professor Dong (Lilly) Liu holds outreach event at Minerals, Metals and Materials Society

The Minerals Metals & Materials Society (TMS) aims to create an inclusive global community where students and professionals from diverse backgrounds feel welcome and valued.

Although Asian Americans have a sizeable presence in the TMS community, they are underrepresented in leadership roles. The Asian/Pacific Islander Working Group was created in 2022 to address this issue and to raise the awareness of API cultures, values, accomplishments, and activities among all TMS members, as well to provide leadership and networking opportunities and create a safe space for API members.

Professor Dong (Lilly) Liu is the founding chair of the API Working Group and this year helped to organise a network mixer for researchers and engineers at the TMS Annual Meeting and Exhibition in Florida in March, sponsored by the Department of Engineering Science. The event was open to anyone identifying as API and their allies.

Professor Liu says, “It was a very successful event held jointly with the Emerging Professionals Committee meeting where the API members and our allies got together creating a supportive network. I was made feeling very proud by the sponsorship from Oxford Engineering and the unreserved support from our Outreach Fellow Prof. Antoine Jerusalem. The establishment and continued development of API Working Group is absolutely essential to enhance EDI in TMS members/events and to promote the next generation of API leaders in this field worldwide.”

Prof. Liu joined the University of Oxford in January 2024, as Associate Professor in Engineering Science and Tutorial Fellow in Trinity College. Prof Liu’s research interests lie in the area of multiple-scale nano-/microstructural and mechanical characterization of advanced engineering materials in extreme conditions. She was recently appointed the incoming secretary for Engineering Ceramics Division of the American Ceramic Society and Co-chair of the UK Chapter.