Dr. Li is an adjunct associate professor and the Quantitative Methodologist in the Department of Sociology. She teaches a statistical programming course to all the first-year Sociology graduate students in their first semester here at Rice. She also teaches other research methods courses to undergraduates and graduates. She serves as the in-house statistical research consultant and gives regular workshops on a variety of topics of quantitative methods to faculty, postdocs, students, and research staff affiliated with Sociology. She is passionate about numbers and the communication of numbers.

Trained as a social demographer. Dr. Li’s main research interests involve health, education, and work, intersecting with immigration. Her current projects include 1) investigating educational and economic outcomes among racial/ethnic groups with a special focus on Asian Americans; 2) using mixed methods to study the work and life experiences of migrant workers in the disaster recovery industry; 3) exploring the health of agricultural workers in the United States. Dr. Li’s published studies have appeared in journals such as Population Research and Policy Review, Rural Sociology, Public Health, and Journal of Health and Social Behavior.