Email: portico-services@ucl.ac.uk
Help Desk: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ras/portico/helpdesk
- Associate Professor
- Dept of Electronic & Electrical Eng
- Faculty of Engineering Science
Zhixin Liu received his PhD degree in Information Engineering from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in 2012. After a short start-up experience, he joined the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton in 2013 and became a Senior Research Fellow in 2015. In 2016, he joined the optical networks group at the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at UCL and became an associate professor in 2021. Dr Liu is a senior member of both IEEE Optica (former OSA).


Dr Liu’s research areas are optical signal processing and its applications in communication systems and scientific equipment. He has pioneered new techniques for high precision data conversion and low-latency data communications that have led to several world's first demonstrations. Dr Liu has co-authored more than 100 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and conferences, with several high-profile papers in Nature Electronics, Nature Communications, 8 invited papers in IEEE/OSA J. Lightwave Technol. and 7 post-deadline as well as top-ranked papers in leading optical communication conferences (OFC and ECOC).
Dr Liu regularly gives invited talks in leading international conferences and serves in technical programme committees in leading international conferences inc. CLEO-PR, OECC and ACP. He also holds two patents, with one licensed to a leading industrial manufacturer. Dr Liu has been PI on over 10 grants from Industry and Research Councils, totalling over £1.7M. He is Co-I on the £6.1m EPSRC Programme grant TRANSNET.
Teaching
Photonics II (3rd and 4th year, ELEC0025)
Aims: To analyse key components of photonic systems and to prepare students for design work in advanced photonic systems such as high-speed optical communications, light detection and ranging, and high performance sensing. The course will be associated with recent research advances and design practices.
Learning Outcomes: Coherent and non-coherent optics; Operation principle of photodiode, lasers and modulators, Properties of optical and optoelectronic material; Noise in communications systems; Properties of fibre optics; Recent research advance.
Signal processing labs
Aims: Understand the metrics to evaluate signal performance, hands-on skills of Fourier analysis that link to the background knowledge in Signal and systems, Analog Electronics and Digital Signal Processing.
Learning Outcomes: Noise floor of real-time oscilloscope; Understanding SNR, SFDR and SINAD from power spectrum density. Time and frequency domain Fourier analysis
Supervision
Undergraduate Final Year project and MSc project at the Dept. of EEE at UCL.
MRes and PhD projects at the Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Connected Electronic and Photonic Systems (CEPS) and
MRes and PhD projects at EPSRC CDT in Compound Semiconductor Manufacturing,
MRes and PhD projects at the Institute of Communications and Connected System
2018 | ATQ03 - Recognised by the HEA as a Fellow | University College London | |
2013 | Doctor of Philosophy | Chinese University of Hong Kong |