Biography
Dr Wei Liu is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at King's College London with extensive teaching and research experience across design, engineering and management.
Wei accomplished her PhD at the University of Cambridge and was Visiting Fellow at Harvard University to explore design education in interdisciplinary fields. Before joining King’s, she conducted academic research and teaching in the UK, US and China. She worked as a faculty member at Cambridge Judge Business School as well as practiced leadership as Assistant Dean at Tongji University and Director of Design Research Group at Aston University. Wei was founding director of several interdisciplinary degree programmes such as MSci Design, Enterprise and Innovation, the first degree programme of its kind in the UK to teach Engineering, Design and Business to trigger students' creativity and entrepreneurship for solving real-world problems. She has won Academic Awards for Teaching Excellency, and is recognised as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) in the UK.
Wei has rich experience of conducting interdisciplinary research, and has obtained over £1.3 million research grants from EPSRC, NSFC and other prestigious funding bodies. She won Best Paper Awards from Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) Conference and British Academy of Management (BAM) Conference. Her research outputs have been published in the leading design, advanced manufacturing and innovation management journals including The Design Journal, Rapid Prototyping Journal, 3D printing and Additive Manufacturing, and R&D Management.
Wei also has professional design experience in world leading business and design consultancies (BCG, IBM and TEAMS Design), where she led the design and development of consumer goods, industrial products and digital products for global top brands. Many of her designed products have been produced and sold in the market. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA).
Research Interests
- Design thinking & user-centered design
- Design and engineering education
- Design for sustainability (circular economy)
- Design management and entrepreneurship
- Design for advanced manufacturing
- Human-computer interaction
- Design-driven innovation
- New product design & development management
- Innovation ecosystems