Fang Li, PhD
Positions
- 2022 - present
Professor (with tenure)
Edmund Wallace Tulloch and Anna Marie Tulloch Endowed Chair
Director of Center for Emerging Viruses
Department of Pharmacology
University of Minnesota, MN - 2024 - present
Founder and CEO of Nanoli Therapeutics - 2022 - present
Co-Director of Midwest Antiviral Drug Discovery Center
Midwest academic institutions - 2017 - 2022
Associate Professor (with tenure) → Professor (with tenure) → Endowed Professor
Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences
University of Minnesota, MN - 2007 - 2017
Assistant Professor (tenure track) → Associate Professor (with tenure)
Department of Pharmacology
University of Minnesota, MN - 2003 - 2006
Postdoctoral Fellow
Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
Harvard Medical School, MA
Sponsor: Dr. Stephen C. Harrison
Degrees and Education
- 1996 - 2002
Yale University, CT
Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
Advisor: Nobel Laureate Dr. Thomas A. Steitz - 1991 - 1996
Peking University, Beijing, China
B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Featured Faculty Profile
“Why I’m a Scientist: Dr. Fang Li,” University of Minnesota Medical School, 2026
Endowment
- 2022 - present: Established the Fang Li Research Awards Endowment at the University of Minnesota to support:
- Annual Fang Li Research Awards in Basic Veterinary Science and in Clinical Veterinary Science for graduate students
- The Endowed Professorship in Structural Biology of Disease
Honors and Recognitions (selected)
Global impact
- Top 500 World's Most Impactful Scientists, Stanford University, 2022
- World's Highly Cited Researchers, Web of Science (Clarivate), 2021 - 2025
Senior author of most-cited all-time papers in Journal of Virology and Annual Review of Virology (Crossref citations), as of March 2, 2026
Endowed positions
- Edmund Wallace Tulloch and Anna Marie Tulloch Endowed Chair, University of Minnesota Medical School, 2022 - present
Endowed Professor in Structural Biology of Disease, University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine, 2021 - 2022
Awards and lectureships
- Elizabeth O. King Lecturer Award, American Society for Microbiology, 2024
- Dean’s Distinguished Research Lectureship, University of Minnesota Medical School, 2025
- Wall of Scholarship, University of Minnesota Medical School, 2025
- Zoetis Award for Veterinary Research Excellence, Zoetis Inc., 2021
- Twin Cities Health Care Heroes, Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, 2023