Qi Liu obtained his PhD in minerals engineering from the University of British Columbia in 1988. He subsequently worked at Wuhan University of Technology (Wuhan, China), University of British Columbia, and Process Research Associates Ltd. (Vancouver, Canada) before joining the University of Alberta 10 years late in 1998. He is currently professor of materials engineering at the University of Alberta, the Ron Nolan/Hatch Chair in Sustainable Energy and Mineral Process Technologies, and the Director for the Imperial Oil Institute for Oil Sands Innovation (IOSI) at the University of Alberta. His major research and consulting activities include sulfide ore flotation; precious metal recovery; iron ore treatment; oxide ore flotation; oil sands processing; solids-liquid separation in mine tailings and oil sands tailings treatment and consolidation; the chemistry of mineral processing and metal extraction; fine particle flotation and polymeric flotation depressants. As of March 2016 he has consulted on 55 industrial projects for various gold, base metal and oil sands mining companies, and published 110 technical journal papers.
