Ying-Ya Liu received her PhD from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China in 2008. Since then, she has been a postdoctoral researcher in Inorganic Chemistry II, Ulm University, under the supervision of Prof. Dirk Volkmer. From 2010, she worked as postdoc. at COMOC in Ghent University under the supervision of Prof. Pascal Van Der Voort, In October 2011, she worked as assistant professor in Ghent University within the dept. of inorganic and physical chemistry. In October 2013, she joined the faculty at Dalian University of Technology (DUT), Dalian, China, where she is currently an associate professor in School of Chemical Engineering. Her current research interests include synthesis and applications of metal-organic frameworks and reaction chemistry for energy conversion. She has over 40 peer-reviewed publications, with over 1000 citations.

Research interests: Synthesis and applications of metal-organic frameworks and reaction chemistry for energy conversion. 

Metal Organic Frameworks are in the first place very beautiful materials. These materials form magnificent 3 dimensional structures, that can be shown to a wide audience. One can then change the linkers, the bridges between the corners One can also change the size, or the function. And although many of these MOF structures are very rigid, resembling zeolites in such cases, some materials are flexible. They are called "breathing" and the analogy is easy to understand. Breathing is associated with life, it is a reversible movements between two states corresponding to expansion and contraction.