Rain Wuyu Liu is an Assistant Professor of Communication. She was born and raised in China. After receiving her bachelor’s degree from Southwest University in her home country, she came to the United States in 2010, where she received her M.A. in Public Relations from the University of Miami in 2012, and Ph.D. in Communication from Michigan State University in 2017.
Rain’s research interests span the areas of persuasion, interpersonal communication, intercultural communication, and social influence. Specifically, her research focuses on the impacts of social norm messages on health and environment information processing, attitude change, and health and conservation behavior promotion. She is also interested in the interplay between cultural values and beliefs with the social normative influence in shaping individuals’ attitudes and behaviors. Her other research interests include research methods and statistics, strategic communication, and campaign design.
Rain has extensive experience of working on grant-funded research projects, including an interdisciplinary behavioral and social science research (IBSS) project conducted among Tibetan herders in Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Other projects were funded by agencies such as the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) and Sparrow/MSU Center for Innovation and Research. Her publications have appeared in Health Communication, Environmental Communication, Communication Studies, Intercultural Communication Studies, American Behavioral Social Scientist, Sustainability, Communication Research Reports, and Computers in Human Behavior.
She has won multiple Top Paper Awards from the National Communication Association (NCA) and the International Communication Association (ICA), the inaugural Environmental Communication Division Dissertation Award from ICA, the Outstanding Paper Award, and the Outstanding Young Scholar Award from the International Association for Intercultural Communication Studies (IAICS), and multiple research excellence fellowship awards from Michigan State University and the Association for Chinese Communication Studies (ACCS) in NCA.
She teaches courses in public relations, intercultural communication, interpersonal communication, persuasion, research methods, and communication campaign design and analysis.