Dr. Wen-Hsiung Li is Distinguished Research Fellow , Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and James D. Watson Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago. He is a member of US National Academy of Sciences and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the 2003 Balzan Prize for Genetics and Evolution, and the HUGO 2008 Chen Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in Human Genetic and Genomic Research.

Dr. Li has been working on the developmental regulation of C4 plant leaves and is best known for his studies on the molecular evolution and methods of DNA sequence and genomic data analysis. He is the author of the first textbooks Fundamental of Molecular Evolution (co-authored with Dan Graur), and Molecular Evolution. He has published more than 400 peer-reviewed publications.