Yixiao Li

My name is Yixiao (pronounced EE-shaw). I’m a PhD student in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology and a fellow in the NSF LinDiv program, hosted by Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts.

Portrait of Yixiao Li
he/himState College, PA

Research

My research sits broadly at the intersection of computational social science, science of science, and artificial intelligence. I use large-scale social, scientometric, and labor-market data to study how education, research, and work evolve.

More recently, I’ve focused on understanding how research communities form, evolve, and produce knowledge. I study how these communities develop shared language, accumulate human capital, and build shared foundations of knowledge, particularly as AI becomes increasingly integrated into the research process.

Background

Before coming to Penn State, I worked as a course coordinator at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Computing and Information. There, I collaborated with faculty, instructional designers, and student success teams to help launch Pitt’s Master of Data Science program.

I also completed my master’s degree at Pitt SCI, where I worked with Dr. Morgan Frank at the Resilient Economy Lab. My research there examined labor dynamics and gender inequality in the context of immigration and brain drain. Our work won the Best Poster Award at IC2S2 2026!