Dongxia Liu earned her B.S. in Chemistry from Shandong University in China in 2000, followed by her M.S. degree from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2003. She completed her Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of Rochester in 2009. Afterward, she pursued a 2.5-year post-doctoral position at the University of Minnesota. In 2012, she joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Maryland (UMD) as an assistant professor and was promoted to an associate professor in 2018 and to a full professor in 2022. In 2023, she joined Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware (UD) as a Robert K. Grasselli Professor.

Dongxia is leading the Materials Synthesis and Catalysis Lab at UD, targeting for controlling composition and constitution of nanostructured materials for catalyst, membrane and reactor technologies to address the challenging issues in renewable energy and chemicals production. She has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and 12 issued/pending patents on these topics. She serves as an Editor for Molecular Catalysis and as an Editorial Advisory Board member for Catalyst, Chem & Bio Engineering, ChemCatChem, Materials Today Sustainability, and The Innovation Materials. Dongxia has won awards including the UMD’s Faculty-Student Research Award (FSRA) awards (2021 and 2013), Junior Faculty Outstanding Research Award in A. James Clark School of Engineering at UMD (2020), and the NSF CAREER award (2013).