Honghong Li examines how biodiversity affects human health and well-being in fields like agriculture, forestry, environmental microbiology, urban design, biodiversity conservation, and biosphere health.

Li leads the systematic mapping of existing evidence on the impacts of biodiversity on human health and well-being across different scales, with an extra focus on unifying existing hypotheses and theories of human-nature relationships, funded by Erling-Persson Foundation. She also works as a partner in the EU COST funded project “Network for Evidence Synthesis in The Agri-Food Sector”. Her methodology incorporates evidence synthesis, machine learning, multivariate analysis, structural equation model and computation, integrating theories and insights from ecology, microbiology, and sustainability science.

Li earned her PhD in Environmental Microbiology from University of Helsinki in 2022. Before joining Stockholm Resilience Centre and Global Economic Dynamics and the Biosphere (GEDB), she worked as a research scientist at the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). Her previous research has examined the role of soil microorganisms in sustainable nutrient management and climate change mitigation.

Awards and achievements

• Research visit grant from Stockholm University Center for Sustainable and Circular Systems (SUCCeSS), 2024
• Research grant from Finnish Culture Foundation, 2020
• Federation of European Microbiological Societies (FEMS) early career scientist grant, 2019
• Research visit grant from Helsinki University, 2018