Prof. Dr. Jia Li received his B.S. from Lanzhou University in 1984, M.S. from the Institute of Botany, CAS in 1989, and his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in 1995. From 1984 to 1986, he worked as a teacher in the Department of Biology at Hunan Normal University. From 1990 to 1991, he worked as an assistant researcher at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences. From 1997 to 2002, he conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Since August 2002, he has been an assistant professor in the Department of Plant and Microbiology at the University of Oklahoma, USA. In May 2008, he was promoted to associate professor and obtained a tenured position. He was appointed Dean of the School of Life Sciences of Lanzhou University through global competition and returned to China to work full-time in March 2009. He has been engaged in research in the field of plant hormone brassinosteroids for a long time. He is the executive director of the Chinese Society of Plant Physiology, the director of the Plant Hormone Professional Committee, the deputy director of the Cell Biology Committee of the Chinese Society of Botany, and a member of the Chinese Society of Cell Biology. He is the founding deputy editor of Food and Energy Security. He is on the editorial board of JIPB, JGG, Plant Signaling and Behavior, Genetics, Acta Botanica Sinica, and Acta Physiologica Sinica.