Li was awarded his PhD in Communication Engineering by Newcastle University of United Kingdom in 2008. Previously, he was awarded a BSc in Applied Physics by Jinan University and MSc in Communication and Signal Processing (with distinction) by Newcastle University in 2003 and 2004, respectively. His PhD thesis title is 'Design of an efficient list decoding system for Reed-Solomon and algebraic-geometric codes'. He was a UK government Overseas Research Scholarship (ORS) recipient for his PhD engagement. After his PhD, he worked as a Research Associate for an EPSRC project collaborated with Cambridge University.

After completing his post-doc engagement in Jan. 2010, he returned to China as a Lecturer with the School of Electronics and Information Technology (then School of Information Science and Technology, SIST), Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU). From 2011 and 2016, he became an Associate Professor and a Professor of the University, respectively. From 2013, he became the Associate Head of Department of Electronic and Communication Engineering (ECE). From Aug. 2017 to Mar. 2020, he was the Deputy Dean of the School of ECE of SYSU. He specializes in channel coding, in particular, algebraic coding theory and techniques. From Jul. 2015 to Jun. 2016, he took sabbatical visiting both Ulm University in Germany and University of Notre Dame in U.S. He has also visited the Institute of Network Coding, the Chinese University of Hong Kong for several occasions. He founded and chairs the IEEE Information Theory Society Guangzhou Chapter, which was awarded Chapter-of-the-Year by the Society in 2021. He was a member of the IEEE Information Theory Society Board of Governors and chairing the Conference Committee (2022 - 2024). He was awarded The Chinese Information Theory Young Researcher award by the Chinese society of Electronics in 2014. He is an Associate Editor (AE) of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, and was an AE of the IEEE Transactions on Communications (2018 – 2023). He has been organizing several international conferences and workshops, including the 2018 IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW) in Guangzhou and the 2022 IEEE East Asian School of Information Theory (EASIT) in Shenzhen, for which he was the General Co-chair. He was also the TPC Co-chair of the 2022 IEEE / CIC International Conference on Communications in China (ICCC) in Foshan. He is the General Co-chair of the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT) 2026 in Guangzhou. He likes music and literature.