Jingyi “Jessica” Li, a UCLA associate professor of statistics affiliated with UCLA’s bioinformatics doctoral program, is among 50 scholars selected as Radcliffe Institute fellows and will spend the 2022-23 academic year on sabbatical at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute.
An interdisciplinary expert in statistics and genomics, Li will write the first book to clarify common confusions in genomics data analysis by connecting cutting-edge genomics research questions with fundamental statistical and machine-learning methods. She expects her research to provide quantitative genomics researchers with clear guidelines to follow as they develop new bioinformatics tools.
In addition, Li was recently awarded a research grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to support her research project, titled, “Enhancing Rigor and Reliability of Single-Cell Data Science.”
She is the senior author of research published in March about reducing false positives in differential analyses of large RNA sequencing data sets. She is also the corresponding author of a 2021 study providing a new statistical framework to increase the reliability of data-driven biomedical research on biomolecules.
Li was named one of MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 in 2021 and will be promoted this year to full professor.
