Zebin Li

I am an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State Harrisburg and also a co-hire of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS), Penn State. I earned my Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University at Buffalo in January 2024. Before joining Penn State Harrisburg, I was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.

My research lies at the intersection of advanced manufacturing, materials science, and artificial intelligence. I am broadly interested in developing intelligent methods to understand, monitor, and control complex manufacturing/materials systems, and beyond.

Methodologically, my work integrates machine learning with physical knowledge and experimental data. I am particularly interested in problems involving complex and heterogeneous data, incomplete physical knowledge, and dynamic or uncertain operating environments. Ultimately, my research seeks to bridge physical understanding and artificial intelligence toward more reliable, adaptive, and autonomous engineering systems.