Dr Li completed his medical degree at the University of Leicester in 2002. He did his Gastroenterology and Hepatology specialist training in the West Midland programme, which included working at the Birmingham Liver Transplant Unit Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Dr Li was competitively awarded the Welcome Trust Clinical Research Fellowship and worked within the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Unit for Liver Disease at the University of Birmingham, under the supervision of Prof. David Adams. His research project was on immune responses in human hepatocellular carcinoma. During this time, he aided in the set up of an early-phase clinical trial, involving the development of dendritic cell therapy for primary liver cancer.

Dr Li completed his PhD in liver cancer immunology in 2016. Dr Li has published extensively on liver disease and is currently the Hepatology research lead at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust.