Professor
Florida State University
Dr. Yan Li is currently a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, at Florida State University. She has more than 20 years of experiences in industry and academy on pluripotent stem cell research and technology development. Dr. Yan Li received her B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Tsinghua University in 1995 and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from The Ohio State University in 2002. At The Ohio State University, Dr. Yan Li received numerous awards including Presidential Fellowship and Graduate Student Alumni Research Award. From 2002 to 2011, Dr. Yan Li worked at Geron Corporation, the world leader in pluripotent stem cell technology, on human embryonic stem cell-derived therapies as Development Scientist, Scientist II, Senior Scientist, and Principal Scientist. Majority of her pioneering work at Geron were unpublished due to the company’s policy of confidentiality.
In 2011, Dr. Yan Li joined the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at Florida State University. Her research focuses on the fundamental understanding of stem cell microenvironment in multicellular aggregate structures and biomaterials-based approach to modulate aggregate composition and microenvironment. The goal is to understand biochemical and biophysical regulation factors during tissue morphogenesis to provide tissue models for neurological disease study and drug screening. Dr. Li received numerous grants from National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Florida Department of Health (FLDOH). She is an awardee of the prestigious NSF CAREER award (2017), Florida State University (FSU) Developing Scholar award (2021), an Emerging Leaders fellow of FSU (2023), and an ELATES fellow nationally (2023). Dr. Li is a panelist for multiple NSF programs, several NIH study sections, and the reviewer for more than 50 journals. Dr. Li has more than 115 peer-reviewed publications, 7 patents, and >145 presentations primarily from Florida State University.