Dr. Yi Li is Professor in the Mathematics and Computer Science Department. Growing up in Northwest China, he received his B.S. degree in 1982 and his Ph.D. in 1988. Dr. Li's research has dealt with nonlinear elliptic and parabolic differential equations, with their applications in Physics, Biology, and Medicine. In particular, his research includes: 1) Investigate the stability of traveling-wave solutions of the nonlinear reaction-diffusion equations. 2) Models for the transmission of an infectious disease in one and two host populations with and without self-regulation are analyzed. 3) Solve the long-standing problem of the exact bifurcation diagram in case nonlinear term is any cubic with real and distinct roots, as well as the exact S-bifurcation problem, related to gas combustion. 4) Give an explicit formula for exponential decay properties of ground states for a class of quasilinear elliptic equations. 5) Study the structure of positive solutions to quasilinear scalar field equation with homogeneous Neumann boundary condition and show the mountain-pass solution develops into a spike-layer solution. 6) Obtain complete structure of 1-periodic solution by means of singularity theory pushing the Abrosetti-Prodi type theorem. 7) Study the Duffing type equation and obtain the exact multiplicity and stability of periodic solutions. 8) Study the Cauchy problem of a cubic reaction system, prove via the renormalization techniques and nonlinear estimates the global dynamics of solutions under mild decay conditions and show the exact large time behavior of solutions which is universal. 9) Study the Hot Spot Conjecture. 10) Publish the first mathematical paper in the world on the uniqueness for bioluminescence tomography. 11) Pulish the first mathematical paper on computed optical tomography.

Dr. Li publishes in well-known publications like, Arch. Rational Mech. Anal., Duke Math. J., Journal of Differential Equations, Commu. PDE, Communications on Pure and Applied Math., Journal de mathématiques pures et appliquées. He was elected AAAS Fellow in 2018 and was named JJC Presidential Scholar in 2022.