Xian C. Li, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Immunology in Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University in New York and director of the Immunobiology & Transplant Science Center at Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston Texas. He also serves as the vice chair of research in the Department of Surgery and holds the Max & Lillie Frosch Centennial Chair in Transplant Research at Houston Methodist.

Dr. Li’s research focuses on the fundamental mechanisms that govern transplant rejection and transplant tolerance as well as clinical translation of basic lab discoveries, with the overarching goal of developing new and innovative therapies for transplant patients. Dr. Li is a highly accomplished scientist, with over 250 papers published in areas of transplantation and immunology, including papers in high impact journals, e.g., Lancet, Science, Nature Medicine, Nature Immunology, Immunity, etc. He has made substantial contributions to the transplant community and is therefore recognized with many awards, elected memberships, and leadership roles. He received multiple awards from the American Society of Transplantation (AST), including AST Young Investigator Award, AST Career Development Award, AST/Wyeth Achievement Award, and the prestigious AST Established Investigator Award (basic science). Dr. Li also received the President’s Award for Transformative Excellence at Houston Methodist. Dr. Li has chaired and organized numerous national and international conferences and has been routinely invited to speak about his research by leading academic institutions worldwide. Dr. Li’s research has been continuously funded by the NIH for more than 20 years; he has 10 patents filed and granted in areas of tolerance, graft rejection, and regulatory cells.

Dr. Xian Li is an active member of multiple professional societies in which he has served in various capacities. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), an honorary society for physician scientists. Dr. Li is now a standing member of AST, AAI (American Association of Immunologists), TTS (The Transplantation Society), ILTS (International Liver Transplantation Society), a member of Faculty 1000 in Immunology. He has served on the AST basic science advisory council, chair of AST Vascularized Composite-tissue Allotransplantation committee, chair of AST Grants Executive Committee, chair of American Transplant Congress Joint Executive Planning Committee, and chair of the American Transplant Congress 2018, one of the largest gatherings of transplant professionals. He has served as a standing member for NIH study sections, including the Cellular and Molecular Immunology (CMI), Transplantation, Tolerance and Tumor immunology (TTT), and Immunobiology of Transplantation & Alloimmunity (ITA) study sections, as well as Department of Defense (DoD) and Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) grant review panels. He has served on the editorial boards of multiple scientific journals including J Immunol, Am J Transplant, Cell Mol Immunol, Front Immunol, Transplantation. He was also the section editor for Am J Transplant (Literature Watch) and now is the deputy editor for the journal Transplantation.

Dr. Xian Li completed his medical training in China and then joined the Multi-Organ Transplant Program at University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, where Dr. Li further completed his PhD training in pathology. He finished his postdoctoral fellowship training at University of Toronto and Harvard Medical School. Before moving to Houston Methodist Hospital in 2013, he was an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and deputy director of the Transplant Research Center at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.