Dr. Tian Li is a Packard Fellow for Science and Engineering and Kavli Fellow by National Academy of Sciences. She is the recipient many awards including Violet B. Haas Fellowship, Moore Inventor Fellowship finalist, Forbes 30 under 30, ASME Haythornthwaite Foundation Research Award, R&D 100 Finalist, Sony Research Innovation Award, MRS postdoc award, among others. As the leading author or corresponding author, she has published on Nature, Science, Nature Materials, Nature Energy, Science Advances, among others. Her research work has been covered in many medias including Science podcast, Nature index, New York Times and others. ​​​​​

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Dr. Tian Li received her bachelor's degree from Department of Electronic Science and Technology at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. She completed her Ph.D. from Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, where she majored in electrophysics/microelectronics under the guidance of Prof. Mario Dagenais. She developed a framework incorporating the Urbach tail at the band edge to evaluate both the linear optoelectronic effect and the two-photon absorption in semiconductor quantum dots. She also developed and optimized the nanofabrication process for high-efficiency InAs/GaAs quantum dot solar cells and low-resistance p-type GaN ohmic contact for Nitrid based devices.

She received the University's Outstanding Graduate Assistant award. Her dissertation on InAs/GaAs quantum dot solar cells received the department’s Distinguished Dissertation Award. She then joined Prof. Liangbing Hu's group as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the same University. Together with the team, she demonstrated novel optical, thermal, mechanical, and transport phenomena of cellulose. In the area of optothermal management of wood, she demonstrated thermal insulation nanowood, transparent wood, and radiative cooling wood. She also made the first demonstration of nanofluidic behavior in cellulose, which she applied toward the development of ionic transistors. She further explored sub-nanometer ion transport by innovatively opening the ångström-scale spacing between elementary fibrils—enabling the use of cellulose as a platform for highly efficient ionic thermoelectric devices. In addition, she demonstrated a process for coordinating copper ions with cellulose molecular chains to create a cellulose-based metal–organic framework (MOF) structure. In parallel, she worked on extreme-temperature thermoelectrics using Joule-heated reduced graphene oxide, and demonstrated in situ characterization of thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, and Seebeck coefficient at temperatures up to 3000 K. Dr. Li joined Purdue University as an Assistant Professor in August 2020.​

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