Seminar with Jingyi Jessica Li, PhD

In-person only | Hosted by Tarek Zikry, PhD

About the speaker: 

Jingyi Jessica Li is a statistician and computational biologist whose work bridges data science and biomedical research. She develops reliable and interpretable methods to analyze complex biological data, with a focus on understanding how genes function and are regulated in health and disease. Her research has helped uncover hidden patterns in gene expression and emphasized the importance of statistical rigor—ensuring that scientific discoveries are trustworthy, even when working with noisy or low-quality data. She strongly believes that statistics is not just a supporting tool but a core driver of progress in biology and medicine.

Dr. Li is Professor and Program Head of Biostatistics at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, where she holds the Donald and Janet K. Guthrie Endowed Chair in Statistics, and Affiliate Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Washington. Previously, she was Professor of Statistics and Data Science at UCLA, with joint appointments in Biostatistics, Computational Medicine, and Human Genetics. She earned her Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of California, Berkeley, and her B.S. in Biological Sciences from Tsinghua University. Her contributions have been recognized with the NSF CAREER Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, ISCB Overton Prize, COPSS Emerging Leaders Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Mortimer Spiegelman Award.