Xiuling Li received her Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. She joined the faculty of the University of Illinois in 2007, after working at a startup company for six years. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research interests are in the area of nanostructured semiconductor materials and devices. She has won the NSF CAREER award (2008), DARPA Young Faculty Award (2009) and ONR Young Investigator Award (2011). Her group’s work on the planar nanowires has won one of the best student paper awards at the 2008 IEEE Photonic Society annual meeting. The micro and nanotube work has been identified as an outstanding symposium paper presented at the 2008 MRS meeting.