He received the B.S. in Physics from Inner Mongolia University in 1991, and M.S. in Measuring and Testing Technologies and Instruments from Nanjing University of Science and Technology in 1996, respectively. He obtained the Ph.D. in communication and information systems from Peking University, China in 2003. Li was a visiting scholar in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of SUNY at Buffalo, USA from 2011 to 2012. His research interests include design, modelling and optimization for optical networks.