As a graduate student in the lab of materials science & engineering professor Christine Luscombe, Liwen developed a new and greener method to synthesize materials for organic photovoltaics (OPVs). OPVs have drawn lots of attention due to their flexibility, light weight, high charge mobility, and solvent processability. She developed a synthetic method called cross dehydrogenative coupling (CDC) polymerization, which can eliminate the pre-functionalization steps of monomers, thus lowering the cost of the resultant OPV materials and minimizing the generation of hazardous chemical wastes. She was named a 2020 Clean Energy Institute Graduate Fellow. She holds a B.S. in Polymer Materials and Engineering from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology (China) and a M.S. in Polymer Science from the University of Akron.