Welcome to Li Lab at UNC Chapel Hill!

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

My research interests span across mathematical, statistical, and machine learning theory, methodology, and various real-world applications. 

Research Interest

1.  Dimension reduction

2.  Gaussian processes

3.  Geometric data analysis

4.  Information geometry

5.  Manifold learning

6.  Network analysis

7.  Nonparametric Bayes

8.  Spatial statistics

Application

1.  Biological networks

2.  Brain connectivity

3.  Electronic Health Record

4.  Environmental health

5.  Genetic and genomics

6.  Images

7.  Time Series

Email: didongli@unc.edu

Google Scholar, arXiv

News:

• Nov 2024:  Wancen and Jiawen's paper on GP-based lead-lag effect detection accepted by Biometrics

• Oct 2024: Paper on inverse reinforcement learning accepted by Transaction of Machine Learning Research

• Oct 2024: Paper on contrastive regression accepted by Annals of Applied Statistics

• Sept 2024: Sam and Yueen's paper on contrastive inverse regression accepted by New England Journal of Statistics in Data Science

• Sept 2024: Jiawen and Jinwei's paper on Spatial Transcriptomics dataset accepted by NeurIPS (DB) 2024

• Sept 2024: Sam and Yueen's paper on contrastive dimension estimation accepted by NeurIPS 2024

• Sept 2024: Hong's paper on Spatial clustering for Carolina Breast Cancer Study accepted by PSB 2024

• Aug 2024: Jordan, Hong, Jiawen and Sam presented at JSM 2024

• Jul 2024: Jordan's paper Comments on Contemporary Uses of Machine Learning for Electronic Health Records by was published on NC Medical Journal 

• Jun 2024: Talk at ICSA Applied Symposium

• May 2024: Paper on design of spatial omics studies accepted by Nature Communication

• May 2024: Talk at New England Statistics Symposium 

• May 2024: Talk at StatGen 

• May 2024: Talk at U Maryland Math

• Mar 2024: Talk at Clemson Statistics 

• Mar 2024: Jiawen won the MCBIOS Young Scientist Excellence Award

• Mar 2024: Christine, Jiawen, Michael and Sam present at ENAR 2024

• Feb 2024: Talk at Texas A&M Statistics

• Jan 2024: Paper on probablistic contrastive dimension reduction accepted by Annals of Applied Statistics

• Dec 2024: Christine, Jiawen and Wancen present at NeurIPS 2023

• Nov 2023: Talk at Rice Statistics

• Nov 2023: Talk at U Delaware Statistics

• Sep 2023: Talk at Emory Biostatistics

• Sep 2023: Jiawen and Wancen's Paper by on identifiability and interpretability of Gaussian processes accepted by NeurIPS2023

• Jun 2023: Talk at ICSA Applied Symposium

• May 2023: Christine, Hong and Sam won the student travel award at the 2023 Symposium of Data Science and Statistics

• Apr 2023: Talk at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard MIA seminar

• Apr 2023: Talk at UNC STOR

• Mar 2023: Sam won the best poster award and the student travel award at the Third Annual Workshop on Emerging Data Science Methods for Complex Biomedical and Cyber Data

• Mar 2023: Talk at ENAR

• Mar 2023: Talk at NCSU Biomath

• Mar 2023: Paper on Gaussian process parameter inference on compact Riemannian manifold accepted by Journal of Machine Learning Research

• Feb 2023: Talk at Brown Applied Math

• Feb 2023: Talk at UNC Greensboro Mathematics and Statistics

• Nov 2022: Talk at Duke Computational Biology & Bioinformatics

• Nov 2022: Talk at UNC School of Medicine

• Nov 2022: Talk at Georgia Tech Math

• Oct 2022: Paper on Gaussian process spatial alignment for spatially-resolved genomic and histology slices accepted by Nature Methods.

• Oct 2022: Talk at Indiana University Bloomington Statistics.

• Oct 2022: Talk at International Conference on Advances in Interdisciplinary Statistics and Combinatorics.