Biography
Ke Li joins Earlham Institute as a Research Group Leader in September 2026
Ke obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the City University of Hong Kong. He undertook postdoctoral research roles at Michigan State University in the US, and University of Birmingham in the UK before moving to the University of Exeter.
His fellowships and awards include a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, Alan Turing Institute Fellowships, a Royal Society Kan Tong Po Fellowship, and involvement in a Royal Society Faraday Discovery Fellowship programme.
At the Earlham Institute, Ke leads a research group developing self-evolving AI systems to accelerate scientific discovery for understanding and engineering living systems.
Ke has published over 160 papers with his group active across core AI spaces, natural language processing, and software engineering; and has served as Associate Editor for seven journals, including IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation and Evolutionary Computation, and as Area Chair for leading AI conferences including NeurIPS, ICML, AAAI and ACL.
Securing major competitive fellowships and research funding from organisations including UKRI, The Royal Society, EU Horizon, Hong Kong RGC and NSFC.