Yanjun Li
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Yanjun Li Assistant Professor (AI Initiative)
Phone: (352) 273-9957 |
Biography
Dr. Yanjun Li is a tenure-track Assistant Professor (AI Initiative) in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the College of Pharmacy, University of Florida. His research interests span the fields of deep learning, AI-driven drug discovery, and computational biology, with a particular emphasis on deep generative modeling for de novo molecule design and geometric deep learning for molecular recognition. Dr. Li’s work aims to develop innovative AI algorithms to tackle foundational life science challenges with broad scientific impacts and to optimize and automate real-world drug discovery and design pipelines.
Before joining the University of Florida, Dr. Li successively worked as a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Deep Learning, Baidu Research USA, Sunnyvale, California, and at Calico Life Sciences, an Alphabet-founded research lab for human aging research. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Florida (2021), advised by Dr. Dapeng Oliver Wu and Dr. Xiaolin (Andy) Li. He received his dual M.E. from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and Waseda University (2015) and B.E. from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (2012).Research Interests
Deep Learning and AI-driven Drug Discovery
Molecule Design and Optimization
- Deep Generative Modeling for de novo Small Molecule, RNA, and Protein Design and Optimization, etc.
Molecular Recognition
- Geometric Deep Learning for Molecular Interaction Prediction, e.g., Protein-protein, Protein-ligand, RNA-ligand, etc.
Computational Biology
- Genetic Variant Effect Prediction, Single-Cell RNA-sequencing, Spatial Transcriptomics, Image-based Profiling Analysis, etc.
Openings
Dr. Li's lab is always seeking self-motivated Ph.D. students, postdoc associate, as well as graduate and undergraduate research assistants, who are interested in AI-driven Drug Discovery.
If interested, please send your CV and unofficial transcripts to yanjun.li AT ufl.edu.
For more detailed information, please follow the link.
News
10/2023: Dr. Li was invited as a panel speaker at the BioTrends Session “Acceleration of Generative AI/Machine Learning in the Life Sciences” for the BioFlorida Annual Conference.
09/2023: Junge Gu and Riddhish Thakare (MS students, Computer Science, UF) joined the lab as research volunteers. Welcome Junge and Riddhish!
09/2023: Dr. Li was invited as the reviewer for the GenBio workshop at NeurIPS 2023 and SDM 2024.
08/2023: Dr. Li has officially joined the UF Health Cancer Center, an NCI-Designated Cancer Center.
06/2023: Shiyu Jiang (MS student, Computer Science, JHU) joined the lab as a research assistant. Welcome Shiyu!
05/2023: Weihang You (MS student, Computer Science, UF) joined the lab as a research assistant. Welcome Weihang!
04/2023: Dr. Li was invited as the program committee for KDD 2023 and AAAI 2024.
04/2023: Dr. Li was invited to give a talk at The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute Chemical Biology & 5th UF Drug Discovery Symposium.
03/2023: Dr. Li officially started his position as an Assistant Professor (AI Initiative) in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Florida, College of Pharmacy. Go Gators!!!
Education
Ph. D. in Computer Science, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA, 2021
M. E. in Communication and Information System, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China, 2015
M. E. in Information, Production and Systems Engineering, Waseda University, Kitakyushu, Japan, 2015
B. E. in Information Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China, 2012