Li received his BS in applied physics from Beijing Institute of Technology, China. He received his MS in optics and signal processing from the University of Franche-Comte, France, and his PhD in physics from the University of Nice, France.

He joined Corning, one of the world's leading innovators in materials science, in 1991 and is currently a Corporate Fellow. He has contributed to Corning’s development of many optical fiber innovations, including bend-insensitive fiber for fiber-to-the-home, fibers with large effective area, low polarization mode dispersion, low-loss fiber for high data rate, and long-haul transmission, as well as high bandwidth multimode fiber for data centers, and multicore, few-mode, and reduced diameter fibers for space division multiplexing. He also worked to develop many other Corning fiber optic advancements, such as: low-stimulated Brillouin scattering fiber for high-power transmission, fiber lasers, connectors, sensors and endoscopes, and glass waveguide devices for optical interconnect and sensing applications.

Li received the John Tyndall Award, the French National Prize on Guided-wave Optics, Corning’s Stookey Award, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for ClearCurve^® bend-insensitive optical fiber. He was a member of teams who won the R&D 100 Award for LEAF^® fiber and for ClearCurve^® fiber, the ACS Northeast Regional Industrial Innovation Award, Corning’s Outstanding External Publication Award, and the ACS Heroes of Chemistry Award.

A member of the US National Academy of Engineering, he is also a Fellow of Optica and IEEE. An engaged volunteer, he has served as a chair and member of planning committees for many international conferences, including OFC. He has been a guest editor for several special journal issues and served as Deputy Editor for the Journal of Lightwave Technology. He is a named inventor on more than 260 of Corning’s US patents and has published seven book chapters and over 330 papers in journals and conferences.