Melissa Li, Ph.D.

Melissa Li, Ph.D., is a Program Director at the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Development Center at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). She is focused on developing programs and initiatives that promote inclusion and equitable access to small business funding for entrepreneurs developing innovative cancer technologies. Currently, she leads the Mentor And Trainee Connections HUb Program (MATCHUP), a program that introduces top-tier talent and SBIR/STTR companies eligible for administrative supplements and co-leads the NCI’s efforts on the NCI SBIR/STTR Training and Entrepreneurship Program (STEP), which provides Phase I SBIR/STTR application preparation support and entrepreneurial training to small businesses.
 
Prior to joining the NCI SBIR Development Center, Dr. Li was a scientific writer with positions as a proposal writer at a large CRO and as a scientific consultant and grant writer for small businesses, raising >$15 million in federal funding. Dr. Li's scientific training focused on molecular mechanisms of noncoding RNAs in the context of lung cancer during her postdoctoral fellowship at the NIH and in the context of metabolic stress during her PhD in molecular cell biology at Washington University in St. Louis.