Jianshu Li’s research interests include representations of Lie groups and p-adic groups, and topics pertaining to automorphic forms. He is the Founding Director of the IASM. He did his undergraduate work at Zhejiang University, firstly in Civil Engineering (1978-79) and then in Mathematics (1979-81). He obtained his MA from Cornell University in 1983, and Ph.D. from Yale University in 1987.

Li was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1994. He served on the Program Committee for ICM 2018, and the Scientific Committee for the Future Science Prizes (2017-2020). He is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.