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Sheng Li Appointed Senior Member of the Association for the Advancement of AI
Sheng Li, associate professor of data science at the University of Virginia, received senior member status from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in recognition of his significant accomplishments in the field of artificial intelligence.
Li directs UVA’s Reasoning and Knowledge Discovery (RISE) Laboratory, a research group focused on developing effective and trustworthy AI solutions that advance data-centric knowledge discovery and causal reasoning. He has published more than 200 papers in major peer-reviewed journals and conferences and has received multiple best paper awards and nominations.
His recent interests include trustworthy AI, causal inference, large foundation models and vision-language modeling. Li’s long-term goal is to develop intelligent systems in open and dynamic environments.
Li will be recognized during the AAAI-26 award ceremony on Thursday, Jan. 22, and will be featured on the AAAI website and the interactive AI Magazine site.
Li is taking a leave of absence from UVA in 2026 to be a senior principal applied scientist at Oracle. He will continue overseeing research grants and mentoring students at the School of Data Science.
