Li Chen joined Case Western Reserve University’s Technology Transfer Office in January 2022 as a senior licensing manager, leading management and commercialization of CWRU engineering and physical science innovations for non-medical applications.
Li has a passion for accelerating innovations' time to market, with special interest in sustainability and startups. She welcomes any collaboration opportunities with industry and business partners. She always believes a good deal closes itself.
Prior to joining CWRU, Li worked as a licensing manager on a team of four at Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties for six years, beginning in 2013. She managed 160 inventions annually (with 40 new inventions each year) from invention discovery, intellectual property protection, marketing, license negotiation to compliance of license. From 2007 to 2012, Li worked as the intellectual property management and marketing assistant for the director of industry partnerships and technology marketing at the Office of Technology Transfer of the University of Akron. Before coming to the United States, Li was a patent examiner at the State Intellectual Property Office of P.R. China, and substantially examined worldwide patent applications on polymer, materials and chemical engineering.
Li received her PhD in chemical engineering and graduate certification of technology and innovation management from the University of Akron. She obtained her master’s in polymer science from University of Science and Technology of China, and bachelor’s degree of chemical engineering with a minor in computer science from Huazhong University of Science of Technology in China. Li is currently enrolled in the part-time MBA program (August, 2022-) of Weatherhead School of Management at CWRU.