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Dr. Li is a pediatric hematologist/oncologist and physician-scientist focusing on aggressive childhood brain tumors at Rady Children’s Hospital and UC San Diego.

He completed most of his medical and research training at the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children, including medical school, pediatrics residency, pediatric hematology/oncology fellowship, and a PhD under advisor Dr. Annie Huang. He was among the first scientists to define the now World Health Organization-recognized molecular subgroups of pineoblastoma, a rare but highly lethal brain tumor arising in young children. He later completed a pediatric neuro-oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, before joining the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics.

Under the mentorship of Dr. Praveen Raju beginning at Mount Sinai, and continuing at Rady’s and UCSD, he has been studying how to circumvent the blood-brain barrier to improve therapies for highly aggressive childhood brain tumors like diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG)/diffuse midline glioma (DMG). Specifically, he has been developing novel P-selectin targeting nanomedicines to package anti-cancer therapeutics, enhancing their delivery into the tumor space while sparing normal brain tissue to reduce side-effects.

Clinically, he primarily works with the Neuro-Oncology and Solid Tumor programs in the outpatient clinic and inpatient unit.