Wenwen Li's research interest is geographic information science with a focus on cyberinfrastructure, big data, semantic interoperability, spatial information retrieval, and distributed geospatial information processing. She heads the CyberInfrastructure and Computation Intelligence Lab in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. Li's research aims to develop integrated, sustainable and smart cyber-infrastructure to revolutionize knowledge discovery in data and computational intensive geographical sciences. Li hopes to utilize state-of-the-art semantic technology to improve the access, integration and spatiotemporal reasoning of distributed GIS data, analytical tools and models. She is also interested in developing analytical methods (e.g., spatial optimization) to support regional economic modeling. Li's work has been applied in several scientific disciplines, including polar science, climatology, public health, hydrology and urban studies. Her research has been supported by various funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), United States Geological Survey (USGS), and Open Geospatial Consortium. Li was the chair of the Association of American Geographers' cyber-infrastructure specialty group from 2013-2014; a member of the Spatial Decision Support Consortium at the University of the Redlands (2015-). Li is the 2015 NSF CAREER award winner -- NSF's most prestigious award for junior faculty. In 2021, she received the NSF Mid-Career Advancement Award. In 2023, she was elected Fellow of the American Association of Geographers and Fellow of University Consortium of Geographic Information Science.