Dr. Yan Li obtained his Ph.D. in 2012 from the Singapore-MIT alliance program, under the guidance of MIT Professor Jianzhu Chen. He then completed post-doctoral training with Prof. James Di Santo at Institut Pasteur, Paris, from 2012 to 2016, and was subsequently promoted to assistant researcher. In 2018, he joined Nanjing University as a professor and principal investigator at the State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. He became qualified as a doctoral supervisor and a principal investigator at the Innovation Institute of Nanjing University in 2019, and was also awarded the title of Jiangsu Province “Innovative and Entrepreneurial Talent” and “Distinguished Professor”. Additionally, he received grant support from the National Key R&D Program Youth Program (formerly the Youth 973 Program). In 2020, he was designated as the leading talent of the Jiangsu Innovative and Entrepreneurial Team Program. In 2021, he received the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars. In 2022, he was appointed as the Vice Director of the Model Animal Research Center (MARC). In 2023, he was promoted to the Director of MARC.

Dr. Yan Li has published his research results in prestigious journals such as Cell, Nature Methods, Nature Communications, Science Advances, etc.. He has been invited to present his research at international conferences nine times and has filed several international and Chinese patents.

Dr. Yan Li is currently a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Workshops on Humanized Mice, a member of the Immune Cell Branch of the Chinese Society of Cell Biology, a member of the Chinese Anti-Cancer Association, a board member of the Jiangsu Society of Cell and Developmental Biology, an associate editor of the Frontiers in Immunology humanized mouse topic. In addition, he has reviewed manuscripts for journals such as Nature Communications, PNAS, European Journal of Immunology, and Frontiers in Immunology/Mircrobiology.