Andrea Jo-Wei Liu is the Hepburn Professor of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania, where she holds a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry. She is a theoretical physicist studying condensed matter physics and biophysics. She is particularly known for her study of jamming, a phenomenon in which disordered materials become rigid with increasing density and stress. She is a Simons Investigator and Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics, fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Source: Wikipedia (en)