Bingbing Forrest Li

Dr. Bingbing Forrest Li is a tenured Full Professor in the Department of Manufacturing Systems Engineering and Management at California State University Northridge (CSUN), where he has served on the faculty since 2014. He earned his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Texas Tech University in 2012. He serves as Assistant Director of the DOE-funded SMART Industrial Training and Assessment Center (ITAC), a collaboration among UC Irvine, CSUN, and Cypress College, and directs CSUN’s Laboratory for Smart and Additive Manufacturing (LSAM).

Dr. Li’s research focuses on smart manufacturing—including industrial AI, multimodal data fusion, autonomous systems, digital twins, and mixed reality—as well as additive and sustainable manufacturing. He has published more than 110 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and secured external project funding totaling approximately $2.4 million as PI and $6.8 million as Co-PI, primarily funded by NASA, DOW, DOE, NSF, CEC and industrial partners. He has mentored students through NASA-funded ARCS, NIH-funded BUILD PODER, and ED-funded HSI-STEM/AIMS2, and serves as faculty advisor to SME Student Chapter S327.

Dr. Li was selected by the Computing Research Association as a NSF NAIRR AI Education Fellow in 2026. His honors include Engineers’ Council Outstanding Engineering Achievement Merit Awards in 2018, 2023, and 2026, and the 2024 Outstanding Educator Award from CSUN’s Andrew J. Anagnost College of Engineering and Computer Science.