As an epidemiologist with medical training, Dr. Li is experienced and committed to the research of diabetes and cardiovascular disease prevention, with particular interests and expertise in integrating state-of-the-art multi-omics technologies and advanced analytics under the framework of systems epidemiology, aiming to identify novel risk factors, understand disease etiology and mechanisms through which risk factors impact health, and to inform the development of personalized preventive and therapeutic strategies. In the past few years, Dr. Li has been leading multiple projects in large population cohorts and interventional trials including the UK Biobank, Nurses’ Health Studies, Health Professionals Follow-up Study, the PREDIMED study, and the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos, among others. Dr. Li was awarded the Jeremiah and Rose Stamler Research Award and the Mark Bieber Award by the American Heart Association. She is actively involved in teaching activities at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her current research projects include:
1. integrating multi-omics data (transcriptomics, metabolomics, and metagenomics) to examine mechanisms through which diet and lifestyles affect risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cognitive decline;
2. employing large-scale genetic, transcriptomic, and proteomic data to examine biological risk factors and pathways relevant to the development cardiovascular disease and diabetes;
3. using polygenic risk prediction for complex disease to identify high-risk populations and examine effective diet/lifestyle intervention strategies for disease prevention among high genetic risk groups.