Ling Li obtained her B.Sc. in Environmental Biology and Ecology and M.Sc. in Botany from Peking University in 1997 and 2000, respectively, and her Ph.D. in Genetics (minor in Statistics) from Iowa State University in 2006. She was an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics, Development, and Cell Biology at Iowa State University. Now, she is an Associate Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Biology at the Department of Biological Sciences, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS, USA. She has been developing an integrated experimental/biocomputational approach to identify the factors (including orphan genes and proteins with obscure features) that regulate plant metabolism and plant adaptation to environmental changes, bridging basic research from Arabidopsis and application in crops.