School of Science Hosts Science Salon Lecture by Prof. Liu Fanghua

The School of Science at Shantou University, together with the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Biotechnology, will host a session of its Science Salon lecture series featuring Prof. Liu Fanghua from the Institute of Ecological Environment and Soil Sciences, Guangdong Academy of Sciences. The talk will focus on interspecies electron syntrophy mechanisms during hydrogen and methane metabolism.

Lecture Overview

The report highlighted that electroactive microorganisms possess the ability to transfer electrons extracellularly and exchange them with their surrounding environment, substantially influencing and modifying marine ecosystems. Iron (III) oxide reduction is a highly conserved trait among these microbes and represents one of the earliest forms of microbial respiration. Recent advances in understanding the diversity of electroactive microorganisms and their unique interspecies electron syntrophy have been driving broader applications in marine biology.

Speaker Biography

Liu Fanghua holds a doctoral degree and serves as a doctoral supervisor and specially appointed professor. She is currently a Grade-3 researcher at the Institute of Ecological Environment and Soil Sciences, Guangdong Academy of Sciences. She was selected for the Chinese Academy of Sciences High-Level Talent Introduction Program (Class A Excellence) and Guangdong Province’s Major Talent Program for Leading Talents, and received support from the “Shandong Excellent Young Scientists Fund” (excellent rating). She currently serves as a committee member of the Geomicrobiology and Archaea Professional Committee of the Microbiology Society of China and as a council member of the Guangdong Soil Science Society.

Prof. Liu has long conducted research on the electro-microbiological mechanisms underlying pollution reduction and carbon mitigation, systematically developing technologies for excavating electroactive microbial resources and their synergistic passivation and detoxification applications with conductive functional materials. She has chaired projects including a sub-topic of the National Key R&D Program, a joint fund project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and a Guangdong Province key-area R&D program. As a core team member, she has participated in more than ten projects, including those of the NSFC Innovative Research Group and major integrated research initiatives. She has co-authored four monographs, published 104 papers, of which 88 are indexed by SCI. Her pioneering work on microbial interspecies “electrical syntrophy” has been included in Norton International Textbooks. She has appeared on the list of the world’s top 2% scientists for four consecutive years, won the First Prize of the 2019 China Ocean Engineering Science and Technology Award (first completer), and holds 22 authorized invention patents and one software copyright.

Time and Venue

• Date and Time: Tuesday, July 21, 2026, 10:00 AM
• Venue: Conference Room C302, High-level Experimental Building

All faculty and students are welcome to attend.

Source: STU OA Notice (School of Science)