Xiuling Li received her B.S. degree from Peking University and Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. Following post-doctoral positions at California Institute of Technology and University of Illinois, as well as industry experience at II-VI, Inc. (formerly EpiWorks, Inc.), she joined the faculty of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2007. At UIUC, she was the Donald Biggar Willett Professor in Engineering and the interim director of the Nick Holonyak Jr. Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory. She joined the faculty of UT in Aug. 2021. She holds the Temple Foundation Endowed Professorship in Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She also has an affiliate appointment in Chemistry as the Fellow of the Dow Professorship.

Her research focuses on nanostructured semiconductor materials and devices. She has published >160 journal papers and holds >20+ patents, delivered > 120 invited lectures worldwide. Her research opens new avenues by using innovative epitaxial growth and nanofabrication approaches including metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) of III-V, III-N and Ga2O3, metal-assisted chemical vapor deposition (MacEtch), and strain-induced self-rolled-up membranes (S-RuM), to address the ever-present needs to reduce the size, weight, power, and cost (SWAP-C) of microelectronic devices, among other applications. She has been honored with the NSF CAREER award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, and ONR Young Investigator Award, as well as the IEEE Pioneer Award in Nanotechnology. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, the American Physics Society (APS), the Optical Society (OSA), the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).