20082025

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Biography

Dr Chen Li is a new Lab Head at the Monash BDI, where he joins the Cancer and Immunity Programs and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Supported by an ARC Future Fellowship and an NHMRC Ideas Grant, Dr Li’s lab develops cutting-edge computational and experimental multi-omic approaches—including transcriptomics, proteomics, and immunopeptidomics—to decode the complexities of human diseases and drive innovative therapeutic solutions.

Originally trained as a computer scientist, Dr. Li earned his PhD in 2016 under the supervision of A/Prof Ashley Buckle and Prof Jiangning Song at Monash University. His doctoral research focused on developing bioinformatics algorithms and databases to analyse the relationship between protein structure, function, and disease.

Following his PhD, Dr Li joined the laboratories of Prof Anthony Purcell and Prof Jian Li at Monash BDI as a research bioinformatician, expanding his expertise into proteomics and immunopeptidomics. In 2018, he was awarded the prestigious NHMRC CJ Martin Early Career Fellowship (2018–2022), which enabled him to train at ETH Zurich under renowned Swiss biologist Prof Ruedi Aebersold, a pioneer in proteomics and systems biology. There, he developed pipelines for profiling and predicting protein complexes, their perturbations, and functions using Size Exclusion Chromatography (SEC)-Mass Spectrometry (MS) data. Dr Li returned to Monash BDI to continue his research in cancer immunotherapy, supported by a Cure Cancer Australia research grant (2023).

His lab at Monash BDI now leverages machine learning and bioinformatics to integrate and analyse multi-omic data in biomedical contexts, advancing and facilitating the development of novel immunotherapies.

Research interests

Systems Proteomics; Immunopeptidomics; Cancer; Personalised Medicine; Bioinformatics

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being

Education/Academic qualification

Bioinformatics, PhD, MONASH UNIVERSITY

External positions

Visiting NHMRC CJ Martin Fellow, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich) (Federal Institute of Technology Zurich)

Mar 2018Feb 2020

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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