Heng Li, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scientist
Heng Li is a senior research scientist in the Program in Medical and Population Genetics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he studies advanced computational algorithms in sequence alignment, variant calling, de novo assembly, data storage, and information query. Li developed and maintains several widely used software packages, such as BWA, samtools, minimap2, and seqtk, for the analysis of high-throughput sequencing data. His research activity is focused on analysis of population genetic data to understand the evolution of human and primates, and he also works with other groups on single-cell sequencing, association studies, and cancer genomics.
Prior to joining the Broad Institute in 2009, Li undertook a postdoctoral fellowship with Richard Durbin at Wellcome Trust’s Sanger Institute in the UK from 2006 to 2009. He was awarded the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize for the most outstanding paper published in Science in 2009 and received the Benjamin Franklin Award for contributions in Bioinformatics in 2012. He was noted as a highly cited researcher in 2014–2016 (top 1% in computer science) and 2017 (top 1% in molecular biology and genetics).
Li graduated from Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, with a B.Sc. in physics. He obtained his Ph.D. in theoretical biophysics from the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Science, in 2006.
Contact Heng Li via email at hengli@broadinstitute.org.
February 2018
