Ronghui Li received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and completed postdoctoral training at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He later joined Altos Labs in San Diego before moving to the National University of Singapore, where he established his independent research group.
Trained as a cell and molecular biologist, his research spans a broad spectrum—from embryogenesis to aging. He discovered that Yamanaka factors induce mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition, enabling somatic cells to become pluripotent (Cell Stem Cell, 2010), and later showed that these factors can reverse aging-associated mesenchymal drift (Cell, 2025). His work also includes engineering stem cells into multicellular embryo-like structures (Cell, 2019) and islet-like structures (Nature Communications, 2021).