Li Chai received the BS degree in applied mathematics and the MS degree in control science and engineering from Zhejiang University, China, in 1994 and 1997, respectively, and the PhD degree in electrical engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, in 2002. From August 2002 to December 2007, he was at Hangzhou Dianzi University, China. He worked as a professor at Wuhan University of Science and Technology, China from 2008 to 2022. In 2022, he joined Zhejiang University, China, where he is currently a professor at the College of Control Science and Engineering. He has been a postdoctoral researcher or visiting scholar at Monash University, Australia, Newcastle University, Australia and Harvard University, USA.

His research interests include distributed optimization, filter banks, graph signal processing, and networked control systems. Professor Chai is the recipient of the Distinguished Young Scholar of the National Science Foundation of China. He has published over 100 fully refereed papers in prestigious journals and leading conferences. He serves as the associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Circuit and Systems II: Express Briefs, Control and Decision and Journal of Image and Graphs.