Dr. Li obtained her B.S. in biology and M.S. in Botany from Peking University in 1997 and 2000, and her Ph.D. in Genetics (minor in Statistics) from Iowa State University in 2006. She had been an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics, Development, and Cell Biology at Iowa State University from 2011. She has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Mississippi State University from 2017. Dr. Li has been developing an integrated experimental/biocomputational approach to identify the factors (including orphan genes and proteins with obscure features) that regulate plant metabolism and plant adaptation to environmental changes, bridging basic research from Arabidopsis and application in crops.