Lili leads the Sustainable Innovation Lab at Centre for Human Inspired Artificial Intelligence, University of Cambridge. She is an internal visitor at the Department of Engineering. Lili is interested in discovering, designing, and constructing pathways to social, environmental and economic sustainability in the real world.

Lili has published 20 high-impact articles and reports that change our understanding, design, and development of sustainability solutions. Three of her publications have received journal awards. Her article on "Motivating actions to mitigate plastic pollution" was among the Top 50 Earth and Planetary Sciences Articles 2019 in Nature Communications. Lili's article in Harvard Business Review helped food companies and policymakers understand how to improve the measure of sustainability in food industry systemically with digital traceability technologies.

Her research findings, such as SEEBEYOND project, have provided scientific evidence for policy development. They supported the Environment Agency in officially expanding its scope to beyond legal compliance in the Regulatory Statement 2022. They were included in the UK’s Green Finance Strategy 2023, the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs’ Food Data Transparency Partnership roadmap, and Environment Agency Chief Regulator’s report 2023-24.

Lili has raised over £1.5mn research grants since 2017, such as Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Economic and Social Research Council, formerly the Social Science Research Council (ESRC) Fellowships. She serves on the Editorial Board of Scientific Reports.