Yifu Li graduated with a Bachelor of Science in industrial and systems engineering at Virginia Tech in spring 2016. He then joined the Ph.D. program in the Industrial and Systems Engineering department at Virginia Tech the following fall. His research interest lies in prognosis health management, and degradation data modeling in manufacturing. His research methodologies are built upon statistical modeling, optimization, and natural language processing.

Yifu enjoys outdoor activities such as biking and jogging in his free time. He also loves swimming. He was a player of StarCraft 2 with Virginia Tech in American Collegiate Starleague as an undergraduate.