Dr. Li received Ph.D. in finance from UCLA Anderson School of Management and B.S. in mathematics from Fudan University (Shanghai, China) prior to joining George Mason. His current research interest is at the intersection of economics and computer science, including blockchain technologies and FinTech applications. His research papers analyze node incentives in distributed consensus protocols, crypto tokens' roles in jumpstarting platforms, the industrial organization of cryptocurrency mining pools with implications for blockchain (de-)centralization and energy consumption, factor structures in cryptocurrency returns, manipulations on crypto exchanges, crypto derivatives, cross-chain communication and interoperability, incentive issues in blockchain scaling solutions, reliability of blockchain explorers, fundamental demand for cryptocurrencies, Web3 participant profiles, and the security design of investment crowdfunding for both investors and entrepreneurs to harness "wisdom of the crowd". His other research also covers governance, human-genAI interaction, information economics, market microstructure, mechanism design, the theory of the firm, and traffic control. 

Dr Li's research has appeared in leading business/financial economics journals including the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, and Management Science as well as leading computer science conferences/workshops including ACM Web (WWW) and Financial Cryptography (FC), among others. His ongoing research is supported by the NSF CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, and his past work has won the Yihong Xia Best Paper Award at CICF and Chicago Quantitative Alliance (CQA) academic paper competition, along with many other paper prizes. He has taught blockchain technologies to executive, MBA, and undergraduate students, served on the committees of major blockchain conferences such as Financial Crypto, ACM Advances in Financial Technologies, CCS DeFi, and IEEE Crypto Valley, and partnered with the U.S. government and private sectors on blockchain economics research. Students in the Master of Management program have voted him the sole recipient of "Faculty of the Year" from the entire faculty. 

Dr. Li is a frequent speaker to both academic and practitioner audiences. He has presented at many institutions/events including MIT, Michigan, Northwestern, NYU, UC Berkeley, Yale, National Bureau of Economic Research, IC3, Consensus, the Federal Reserve, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security National Training Center. A non-technical overview talk on some of his past blockchain research at UC Berkeley's Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IybadmGPtM&feature=youtu.be