Abstract: The cultivation of innovation capabilities of liberal arts researchers at science and engineering colleges and universities is vital in building the world-class system for cultivating liberal arts talents with Chinese characteristics. The paper analyzes the structure of the innovation capabilities of liberal arts researchers at science and engineering colleges and universities, and further explores their influencing factors and specific indicators. The study finds that the connotative structure of the innovation capabilities of liberal arts researcher at science and engineering colleges and universities includes acquiring new knowledge, mastering new research methods and proposing valuable new ideas and creative research results. The main factors affecting the innovation capabilities of liberal arts researchers are research autonomy, research environment, platform environment and organizational structure. Therefore, the cultivation of innovation capabilities of liberal arts researchers needs to rationally adjust the incentive and regulatory factors in the management system to enhance their research autonomy, build the research platform with abundant resources to provide effective support for the cultivation of innovation capabilities of liberal arts researchers, and provide the researchers with rich data resources, international communication platform and cross-training opportunities to enhance their ability to acquire knowledge and scientific research methods. In addition, it is still necessary to expand the practice bases of liberal arts and deepen the scientific research mechanism of integrating theory with practice to promote the innovative achievements of researchers, and optimize the organizational environment and improve the promotion mechanism to ensure the steady development of the researchers.