Sophia 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. Dr. Liu 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 (DOI). She was recently mission assigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to be one of the first FEMA Crowdsourcing Coordinators in response to the 2017 hurricanes. As a USGS Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Liu previously worked at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado on the Tweet Earthquake Dispatch project, the USGS St. Petersburg Coastal Marine Science Center in Florida on the iCoast – Did the Coast Change? project, and the USGS National Center in Virginia with the Minerals program organizing GeoHackJams. 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 received a B.A. at University of California, Irvine in Social Science with a minor in Information & Computer Science and in Digital Arts.