On May 19th 2026, we joined a few Rogel Cancer Center members to meet and deliver talks during the recent visit of the new NCI director, Dr. Letai.
In January 2026, I gave a talk at the inaugural Gordon Conference on Microbiome Editing.
December 2025, Collins Chimezie (2nd year PhD student) received the Rackham International Fellowship. https://bme.umich.edu/2025/12/16/collins-chimezie-receives-rackham-international-fellowship/
December 2025 Michigan Synthetic Biology Team Earns Gold at International iGEM Competition in Paris
Honored to serve as a faculty advisor for the UM SynBio iGEM team.
October 2025 Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA.
August and September, 2025, Swim Across America (SAA) – Motor City Mile Swim and University of Michigan. More than a hundred swimmers and volunteers joined the SAA inaugural pool swim. We participated in two swimming events to support cancer research.
September 2025 Farewell lunch for Dr. Chengyuan Fang
April 2025 Attending the Spring Retreat for Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in Healdsburg, CA
Jan, 2025 Meeting with Dr. Shu Chien from UCSD at the 2025 BMES CMBE Conference in Carlsbad, CA.
Dec, 2024 Lab dinner
Dec 2024, Shaobo Yang successfully defended his thesis and became the 3rd PhD student to graduate from the lab.
In May 2024, the Li lab received an award from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to lead a project on engineering probiotics to combat Salmonella infection in chickens, in collaboration with the Selvaraj lab at the University of Georgia.
March 2024, Mengdi Yang successfully defended her thesis and became the 2nd PhD student to graduate from the lab.
October 2023: The official announcement for the 2023 NIH New Innovator Award was released: https://commonfund.nih.gov/newinnovator/AwardRecipients. We are looking forward to developing a potentially disruptive technology to edit the microbiome in situ.
July 2023, The Li lab setup was completed.
May, 2023 The new lab space is ready to welcome new personnel and equipment.
In January, 2023, the official notification of NSF CAREER came, and many thanks to former and current mentors, students, and collaborators.
In July, 2022, the Li lab signed a sponsored research agreement with ECO Animal Health (United Kingdom, https://ecoanimalhealth.com) to pursue genetically modified probiotics in poultry.
In April, 2022, the Li lab participated in “Building Bridges”, a semi-annual event to provide high school students with the opportunity to explore Northeastern University’s College of Engineering. We discussed how our lab has been engineering bacteria to address challenges in the production of essential medicines.
February, 2022, our long-term collaborator, Dr. Xuesong He (PI) from the Forsyth Institute, received an R01 award from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, and the Li lab (co-I) is excited to be one of the key collaborators over the next five years to explore the oral microbiome-host interactions mediated by tRNA fragments. https://reporter.nih.gov/search/uvtBal8gnUKRugVjBNdoOw/project-details/10446416
December, 2021, The Li lab received an R03 award from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. We will collaborate with Dr. Xuesong He from the Forsyth Institute in Cambridge to develop innovative ways to target opportunistic oral pathogens using chemically modified small RNAs. https://reporter.nih.gov/search/nHqoLl4yoEG7JLglaocUXA/project-details/10353249
December, 2021, Congratulations to our undergrad researcher, Shana Broitman (COE’23), on being awarded an Honors Early Research Award
October, 2021 PhD students Mengdi Yang and Shaobo Yang presented their work at the 2021 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Meeting in Orlando, Florida.
October, 2021 Congratulations to our undergrad researcher, Shana Broitman (COE’23), on being selected as one of the Fall 2021 PEAK Experiences Awardees. She is going to pursue “Overcoming STING Silencing in Cancer Cells through Ribonucleoprotein Strategy.” https://bioe.northeastern.edu/news/fall-2021-peak-experiences-awardees/
August, 2021, The Li lab receives the Trailblazer Award from NIBIB to develop programmable probiotics against Leigh syndrome. https://reporter.nih.gov/search/JR21r2mf3E6iD7k2bXN96w/project-details/10303309
April, 2021, The Li lab signs a 3-year sponsored research agreement with Quintarabio to pursue genome editing.
On March 17th, 2021, members from the Li lab spent a few hours driving to the Aquaculture Research Institute at the University of Maine to perform a pilot vaccination study in Atlantic Salmon. Special thanks to Dr. Deborah Bouchard, Sarah Turner, and their team members for hosting our visit.
In February, 2021, the Li lab received the FY20 Idea Award from PRCRP to target oncogenic gut metabolites to prevent colorectal cancer. https://cdmrp.army.mil/prcrp/awards/20iaawards
October, 2020, The Li lab receives the FY20 Discovery Award from PRMRP to address mitochondrial diseases using engineered gut commensal bacteria. https://cdmrp.army.mil/prmrp/awards/20daawards
In September 2020, our research project, entitled A Novel Adjuvant for Aquaculture Vaccines Using Engineered Bacteria Targeting the STING Pathway, was selected for the inaugural grant from the Roux Institute, a joint program between Northeastern University and the University of Maine.
June, 2020 The Li lab receives industry funding from Hollings Biotech to develop a rapid platform for manufacturing nanobodies towards personalized diagnosis.
On October 17, 2019, the Li lab (co-PI) received an international grant titled “Engineer synthetic exosomes for RNA interference in ovarian cancer” from the Research and Innovation Agency at the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia. We will collaborate with Dr. Amal Ali Al-Dossary (PI) from Saudi to find a cure for women who suffer from ovarian cancer.
On October 3rd 2019, Mengdi, Ge, and Keqing drove to the Setlow lab at the UConn Health Center to learn the art of spore purification from the lab members. From left to right: Mengdi Yang, Ge Zhu, Peter Setlow, George Korza, and Keqing Nian.
August 20, 2019, Professors Bajpayee and Li received an NIH Trailblazer R21 grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. Professor Li, as the Co-PI on the collaborative grant, will apply tools developed in his lab, including bacterial synthetic biology and drug delivery, to address cartilage damage and repair.
August 18, 2019, The Li lab receives the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Northeastern University Joint Program in Cancer Drug Development Award. We will collaborate with Dr. David Barbie’s lab from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to develop a new approach to address resistance against immune checkpoint blockade in non-small cell lung cancer.
June 19, 2019, Ge and Mengdi presented their work on engineering B. subtilis spores to make future medicines with long shelf lives at room temperature at the 2nd Annual Bioengineering Research Symposium
June 6-7 2019, three lab members attended the 25th annual Boston Bacterial Meeting held at the Harvard Science Center, and met some future collaborators in engineering the human microbiome for oral and gut health.
April 2019 Our lab received the Mentored Award from the FY20 TIER 1 Grant, titled “Engineering Novel Analgesics Inspired by the Gut Microbiome,” Jiahe Li (Bioengineering), Kim Lewis (Biology)
December 2018 The Li Lab has received the 2018 Peer-Reviewed Medical Research Program – Discovery Award from the Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, to explore oral vaccines against the Zika virus.