From 2005 to August 2009, Li was an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Computer Science Department at Princeton University, respectively. She joined Stanford in 2009 as an assistant professor, and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2012, and then full professor in 2017. At Stanford, Li served as the director of Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) from 2013 to 2018. She became the founding co-director of Stanford’s University-level initiative – the Human-Centered AI Institute, along with co-director Dr. John Etchemendy, former provost of Stanford University.
On her sabbatical from Stanford University from January 2017 to fall of 2018, Li joined Google Cloud as its Chief Scientist of AI/ML and Vice President. At Google, her team focuses on democratizing AI technology and lowering the barrier for entrance to businesses and developers, including the developments of products like AutoML. She returned to Stanford University to continue her professorship in the fall of 2018.
Li is also known for her nonprofit work as the co-founder and chairperson of nonprofit organization AI4ALL, whose mission is to educate the next generation of AI technologists, thinkers and leaders by promoting diversity and inclusion through human-centered AI principles. Prior to establishing AI4ALL in 2017, Li and her former student Olga Russakovsky, currently an assistant professor in Princeton University, co-founded and co-directed the precursor program at Stanford called SAILORS (Stanford AI Lab OutReach Summers). SAILORS was an annual summer camp at Stanford dedicated to 9th grade high school girls in AI education and research, established in 2015 till it changed its name to AI4ALL @Stanford in 2017. In 2018, AI4ALL has successfully launched five more summer programs in addition to Stanford, including Princeton University, Carnegie Mellon University, Boston University, U. of California Berkeley, and Canada’s Simon Fraser University.
Li has been described as an “AI pioneer” and a “researcher bringing humanity to AI”.
Li was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2020.
In May 2020, Li joined the board of directors of Twitter as an independent director.
