Na Li

Biography

I am a Thomas D. Cabot associate professor in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at Harvard University and a research affiliate in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  I received my bachelor's degree in Mathematics in 2007 from Zhejiang University and Ph.D. degree in Control and Dynamical Systems (CDS) in 2013 from the California Institute of Technology. Then I did one-year postdoctoral research in LIDS. I started my appointment as an assistant professor at Harvard in 2014. 

My research lies in the learning, optimization, and control of network systems, with particular applications to cyber-physical systems. The goal is to develop foundational theories and tools to explore and exploit real-world system structures that can lead to computationally efficient and distributed solutions and apply them to improve systems operations and architecture. My research has been interdisciplinary in nature, integrating various mathematical, computational, engineering and some economics tools. I have received Donald P. Eckman Award, ONR YIP Award, AFOSR YIP Award, NSF CAREER Award, Harvard Climate Change Solution Fund, Harvard PSE Accelerator Award, CDC best student paper award finalist, CCTA best student paper award finalist (as an adviser) etc.