Willis X. Li is a Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego (California). He received his B.S. degree from Peking University (China), and a Ph.D. from Columbia University (New York).
Dr. Li’s research has been focused on cellular signaling, particularly the JAK/STAT signaling pathway, which plays important roles in animal development and in human diseases including cancers. Dr. Li’s expertise lies in the use of genetic model organisms and molecular cellular methods for understanding biological functions and mechanisms of cell signaling. His past research has elucidated a non-canonical mode of JAK/STAT signaling, in which unphosphorylated STAT plays an important role for maintaining heterochromatin stability and tumor suppression.
Dr. Li began his independent research as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biomedical Genetics, the University of Rochester, NY, and became an Associate Professor there in 2005. Dr. Li received multiple Research Scholar Awards, including those from the American Cancer Society (2006-2010), the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (2007-2012), the Davey Memorial Award for Outstanding Cancer Research (2008), and the Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging (2012). In 2011 he was recruited as a full Professor at the Department of Medicine, UCSD. His research program encompasses using Drosophila, mice, as well as human cell lines to discover the functions of signaling pathways in regulating cellular epigenetic states, including heterochromatin formation, that have been implicated in cancer development.
