Liu was recognized by CAP for his “exceptional and sustained contributions as an educator, mentor, and leader in building inclusive and high-impact learning environments.”  

CAP highlighted Liu’s outstanding leadership at McGill in advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion, including leading the Department of Physics’ first climate survey, establishing a graduate teaching award, and co-founding the “Classroom Physicists” project to broaden representation. The association also noted the strong impact of his teaching approach—blending conceptual reasoning, active learning, and guided inquiry—as well as his exceptional mentorship of over 40 undergraduate researchers, many of whom have gone on to publish in leading journals, win presentation awards, or pursue top graduate studies. 

"I am honoured to have been selected for the CAP Medal and am extremely grateful and humbled to join a group of distinguished pedagogues,” said Liu. “At the same time, I wish to acknowledge the thousands of physics educators at McGill and across the country whose daily diligence and innovations in teaching may not be recognized, but which form the basis of our success.”  

Liu’s research focuses on building the largest-ever three-dimensional map of the Universe across space and time, with particular emphasis on the Cosmic Dawn, when the first stars and galaxies formed. Using observations from large radio telescopes, his work traces how matter condensed into these earliest cosmic structures. 

Liu joined McGill in 2018, the same year he was named a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar in Gravity and the Extreme Universe, an award backed by $100,000 to support high-risk, high-reward interdisciplinary research led by early-career researchers. 

In 2020, he received a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship and became the youngest recipient of the Department of Physics’ John David Jackson Teaching Award. He went on to earn McGill’s highest university-wide teaching honour, the President’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching, in 2024. 

Liu is currently Principal Investigator on a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) CREATE grant valued at $1.65 on "Radio Astronomy-Driven Education and Training Excellence (RADEATE)" and an NSERC Discovery Grant of $295,500 for "Completing our Universe’s Timeline with Power Spectrum Measurements of Hydrogen Intensity Mapping".