Dr. Yongqin Liu, born in 1969, is a Professor at the Pan-Third Pole Environment Center of Lanzhou University and a Research Professor at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). She is also the Executive Director of the Pan-Third Pole Environment Center and leads major interdisciplinary research on cryosphere microbiology, biogeochemical cycles, and global environmental change across the Tibetan Plateau. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, a selected member of the National Hundred, Thousand, and Ten Thousand Talents Project, and an expert receiving the Special Government Allowance of the State Council.

Her research primarily focuses on cryosphere microbiology, particularly the diversity, ecological functions, and climate feedbacks of microbial communities in glaciers, snow, ice cores, permafrost, proglacial lakes, and high-altitude lakes of the Tibetan Plateau. She has long been dedicated to understanding how microorganisms shape biogeochemical cycling in extreme cold environments and how glacier retreat and climate warming alter microbial processes, carbon and nitrogen cycling, and downstream ecosystem functioning.

She serves as the Deputy Leader of Task Five and the Lead for the Microbial Theme in the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP). In recent years, she has led more than 10 major national research projects, including NSFC programs, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) Key R&D Programs, and major international collaborative projects.

Her international experience includes participation in the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-Term Ecological Research (MCM LTER) program in Antarctica and NASA’s exobiology exploration programs in the Arctic. She has also actively promoted international collaboration in global cryosphere microbiome research and contributes to building the Global Cryomicrobiome Initiative.

As the first or corresponding author, she has published more than 100 SCI papers in leading journals such as Nature Biotechnology, Microbiome, Environmental Microbiology, Journal of Glaciology, and Science Bulletin. Her major scientific contributions include revealing how microbial communities in glaciers and lakes respond to climate and environmental change, identifying microbial signatures preserved in ice cores as novel indicators of past climate variability, advancing understanding of microbial carbon and nitrogen cycling in glacier ecosystems, and establishing one of the most comprehensive microbial strain banks and genomic resources for extreme environments on the Tibetan Plateau.

Her recent work has particularly emphasized glacier microbiomes as active regulators of biogeochemical processes rather than passive inhabitants of frozen environments, highlighting the role of cryosphere microbes in linking ice archives with living systems under global warming. She has received several honors, including the 9th Tibetan Plateau Young Science and Technology Award, the KC Wong Western Scholar Outstanding Contribution Award, the CAS President’s Award for Outstanding Supervisor, and the Outstanding Woman Scientist Award of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.