Liu earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Zhejiang University (China) in 2005. After completing his doctorate in 2011, he conducted postdoctoral research at Northwestern University, where he was named an Outstanding Researcher in the International Institute for Nanotechnology. He joined the Department of Chemistry and affiliated to the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Virginia Tech in Fall 2014. Liu holds about two dozen patents. Among them, over ten are licensed or assigned to companies including Intel®, Western Digital®, Ford Motors Company, SABIC, Waves Audio (Israel). Liu has been named an Inventor of the Month at Virginia Tech. Liu is a recipient of the VT Junior Faculty Award, NSF CAREER award, Air Force Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award, ACS PRF Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) award, ACS PMSE Young Investigator award, and John C. Schug Research Award. He is also named Young Talent or Emerging Investigator of a number of journals including Macromolecular Rapid Communications, Polymer Chemistry, Journal of Materials Chemistry, Molecular Systems Design & Engineering, and ACS Applied Polymer Materials. He chairs the Blackwood Junior Faculty Fellow in the College of Science at Virginia Tech.