Her main research areas are machine learning, computer vision and cognitive computational neuroscience.

Born in Beijing in 1976, Li grew up in Sichuan province, southwestern China, living a happy childhood as part of a prosperous family.

Her father, Li Shun, worked in the computer department of a chemical plant, and her mother, Kuang Ying, was a secondary school teacher.

In 1992, her parents took 16-year-old Li to the US for a better education, beginning their immigrant life.

Her father found a job repairing cameras, while her mother worked as a cashier in a supermarket. The family lived in a small one-bedroom flat.

Their life was in stark contrast to the way they had lived in China.

Determined to escape poverty, Li attended secondary school while also working as a waitress and cleaner.

Her secondary school mathematics teacher, Bob Sabella, recognised her talent for maths and physics and provided continuous encouragement and support.

Li recalled that once, while discussing science fiction writers with Sabella, she felt for the first time that an American saw her as more than just a Chinese immigrant.

It gave her confidence and dignity.

In 1995, she gained a scholarship to Princeton University. In 2005, she received a PhD from the California Institute of Technology.

During her doctoral studies, Li made significant contributions to the one-shot learning technique, making her mark in the artificial intelligence (AI) science community.

The technique can make predictions based on minimal data and is important for computer vision and natural language processing.

In 2006, she began conceptualising the creation of the ImageNet database, which has been dubbed the “eye of AI” and laid the foundation for generative AI.

In one interview, Li said that the field of AI is still dominated by men.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the number of computer science research jobs will grow 19 per cent by 2026. Yet women gain just 18 per cent of computer science bachelor degrees in the US.

“Students go to an AI conference and they see 90 per cent of people of the same gender. Also, they do not see African Americans nearly as much as white boys,” Li said.

In recent years, Li has used her influence to speak up for women and minority groups.

In 2017, she founded the non-profit educational organisation AI4ALL, which opened the Stanford AI Laboratory’s courses to secondary school students.

AI4ALL is dedicated to encouraging young women and minority students to explore and choose computer science as a future research direction.

Li also frequently speaks at academic and industry conferences, emphasising gender equality and racial diversity in the hi-tech industry.

In November last year, she published her autobiography The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI.

“I am a shy person, not good at expressing myself, but I insisted on publishing a book because the field of AI cannot lack female voices,” Li said.