Li Ge

Early Life and Education

Li Ge was born in China and graduated from the Affiliated High School of Peking University. He received a B.A. from Peking University in 1989 and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Columbia University in 1994. At Columbia, Li's mentors included W. Clark Still and Koji Nakanishi.

Rise to Success

During his employment at Pharmacopeia, Inc., Li traveled to China to establish a joint business venture. Following this visit, in 2000, Li left the company and co-founded WuXi AppTec in Shanghai with his wife, Ning Zhao. WuXi AppTec is a leading contract pharmaceutical research firm. Under Li's leadership, the company achieved significant milestones, including its listing on the New York Stock Exchange and a subsequent public offering in Hong Kong in 2018.

Key Business Strategies

Li pioneered an integrated R&D service model and the open-access R&D enabling platform model with the conviction that more efficient and cost-effective R&D should be at the core of better medicines for patients, and that “every drug can be made and every disease can be treated.”

Philanthropy

In 2018, Li and his wife, Ning Zhao, donated 100 million RMB to Peking University to establish the Li Ge-Zhao Ning Education Fund. In 2020, the couple donated $21.5 million to Columbia University to support research and chemistry teaching. In 2021, they contributed $20 million to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center's research on lung cancer.