Deeply affected by Japanese aggression, Li chose to study aeronautical engineering in order to contribute to China's national defense.

[4][6] After graduation from MIT, Li and Wu both joined the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the predecessor of NASA) as research scientists.

[4] With the outbreak of the Korean War, relations between the US and the newly established People's Republic of China turned openly hostile, and Li and Wu decided they could no longer work for the US military.

[4] In 1958, Li was appointed head of solid mechanics at the newly established University of Science and Technology of China.

[7] In 1959, she led a team that designed China's first instantaneous heat load testing system for the satellite carrier rocket.

In the 1970s, she developed a method to analyze defects in aerospace turbomachinery, and won the 1978 Major Achievement Award from the CAS.