Song Li

Song Li is a chancellor’s professor of bioengineering and the associate dean for graduate and professional education at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. Prior to assuming this inaugural role on July 1, 2025, Li served as the chair of the Bioengineering Department from 2016 to 2024. He has a joint appointment in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and is a member of the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center, the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

As UCLA Samueli’s first associate dean for graduate and professional education, Li oversees the school’s two professional-degree programs — the top-ranked Master of Science in Engineering Online and the one-year, on-campus Master of Engineering programs — as well as the student affairs of the school’s regular master’s and doctoral programs. Li is also an active researcher directing the Song Li Lab. His research focuses on cell and tissue engineering, mechanobiology and biomaterials. He has been an advisor or co-advisor to more than 45 Ph.D. students.

Li has been elected a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the International Academy of Medical and Biology Engineering. He has chaired national and international conferences on biomedical engineering, mechanobiology, vascular-tissue engineering and other topics. He has advised governmental and research organizations in more than 10 countries and also has reviewed papers for more than 50 scientific journals, edited three books and served on the editorial board of four journals. He served as director of the Bioengineering Institute of California from July 2022 to June 2025 and is currently a member of the AIMBE board of directors for a term spanning 2024 to 2026.

Prior to joining UCLA Samueli in 2016, Li had been a bioengineering faculty member at UC Berkeley since 2001. He received his Ph.D. in bioengineering at UC San Diego and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Peking University in China.