Liwen Ji (He/Him, etc)

Liwen Ji began his career in 2004 as an Assistant Researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC), Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he synthesized, modified, and doped electrically conductive polymers for biomedical applications. He came to the USA for his Ph.D. studies in January 2007 and obtained his Ph.D. degree from North Carolina State University in December 2009. His Ph.D. work focused on synthesizing electro-spun fiber-based nanocomposites for advanced lithium-ion battery anodes, cathodes, and separators, and fabricating electro-spun nano-fiber composites for direct methanol fuel cells and proton exchange membrane fuel cells. From January 2010 to December 2013, he worked as a Materials Science Postdoctoral Fellow, and Postdoctoral Research Associate at the US DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Pacific Northwest National Lab, respectively, where he synthesized, constructed, and designed different types of carbon nano-fiber-sulfur, graphene oxides-sulfur, conductive polymer-sulfur nano-composites, carbon nanofiber composites loaded with different alloys, and multilayer nanostructures with alternating graphene films and metal or metal oxide layers and investigated their applications in advanced lithium-ion batteries, lithium-sulfur battery, Na-ion batteries, solid-state batteries, and a few others. From January 2014 to October 2014, he worked as a Contract Research Scientist at General Motors Technical Center, where they synthesized, optimized, and scaled up layered-layered cathode material for EV battery applications, and he also designed different graphene-based nanocomposites for advanced energy storage devices. After that, he was a Research Scientist II at Lynntech, Inc., where actively contributed to the conception and preparation of about 15 pieces of energy storage & conversion-related research proposals submitted to different US governmental agencies (e.g. DOE, DOD, NASA, NIH, etc). He also served as Lead PI for a project entitled "Novel Solid-State Lithium-Sulfur Battery Technology for Military Vehicles" awarded by the US Army. From August 2016 to September 2020, he was a Principal Scientist at Enevate Corporation, where they developed high energy/power density, high-efficiency silicon-rich composite anodes for high-energy and long-life EV batteries. Other of his projects at Enevate include optimizing electrolytes and interphases in high-energy and long-life EV batteries and evaluating high-voltage and high-capacity co-less, Ni-rich NCM, NCA, NCMA cathodes, Li-rich cathodes, LCO, and a few others for high energy, and long-life EV batteries. Most recently, he worked as Director of Battery Materials Technology at EoCell Inc., where he developed next-generation high-performance Li-ion batteries with a unique silicon/carbon nanocomposite anode technology for EV and consumer electronics applications. In the meantime, he jointly mentored the materials lab and cell manufacturing pilot line to design and build EV battery materials and cell prototypes/products. Currently, he is the Sr. Director of Battery Cell Engineering at Atlis Motor Vehicles, where he is revolutionizing battery technology from the ground up for work vehicles, and building the technology ecosystem that powers our lives.

Liwen Ji obtained a B.S. in Materials Chemistry from Lanzhou University in July 2001. Liwen then went on to pursue an M.S. in Polymer Chemistry & Physics at Zhejiang University, which they completed in April 2004. Finally, he achieved a Ph.D. in Fiber & Polymer Science/Lithium-Ion Batteries and Fuel Cells from North Carolina State University in December 2009.