Dr. Li Li is the Barry and Shirley Isett Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Penn State University. She has pioneered the use of big data, machine learning and reactive transport models to deepen our understanding of Earth's surface and subsurface processes, especially concerning water quality in a changing climate, from watershed to continental scales. Her scientific journey is distinguished by insightful work and prolific publication, with over 109 journal articles, including 20 in AGU journals and notable papers in Nature Water and Nature Climate Change. This is particularly notable in the context of academia's demographic landscape in the Western world, where faculty women of color have remained strikingly scarce.

Dr. Li is known for her innovations in reactive transport modeling and, specifically, adapting them from their traditional applications in the field of contaminant transport and hydrogeology to elucidate the intricate interplay between climate, weather, land use and river water quality. For instance, Dr Li’s team developed the “shallow and deep hypothesis,” which has revealed how riverine water chemistry is linked to watershed subsurface structures, advancing a mechanistic understanding of riverine water quality and providing a new framework for scientific inquiry. Dr. Li’s work on river water quality has reshaped our understanding of water quality response to climate change. Harnessing cutting-edge deep learning tools, she developed continental-scale models to show the dominant control of temperature on dissolved oxygen levels. Her work also highlighted the unexpected, widespread deoxygenation in warming rivers at rates surpassing that of oceans.

Beyond her research, Dr. Li is committed to fostering a diverse, equitable and inclusive scientific community, with a particular emphasis on supporting women scientists. In 2021, she co-founded the global monthly seminar Women Advancing River Research with Ellen Wohl. This platform, now well established within the hydrology, geomorphology and biogeochemistry communities, has featured over 100 women scientists across five continents.

—Nandita Basu
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada