Meet The Team
Principal Investigator
Ronald H. L. Li, DVM, MVetMed, PhD, DACVECC
After obtaining his DVM from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, Dr. Li completed a rotating internship in Toronto, where he developed a keen interest in emergency and critical care medicine. He worked as an emergency clinician for one year before completing a residency and Master’s of Veterinary Medicine in small animal emergency and critical care at the Royal Veterinary College (UK) in 2014. Dr. Li then pursued a PhD in Integrative Pathobiology at the University of California, Davis, where he studied platelet and neutrophil biology. He then stayed on as a tenure track faculty where he worked as a criticalist in the hospital and a principal investigator of the Comparative Platelet and Neutrophil Physiology Laboratory at UC Davis. He is committed to training clinician scientists and bridging the gap between basic science and clinical research to benefit clinical patients.
In his spare time, he likes to take his 2 Golden Retrievers on his boat, The Lusitropy.
Lab Members
Meg Shaverdian, BS
PhD Candidate
Meg received her Bachelor’s degree in physiological sciences from University of California, LA. She started her Ph.D program in Integrative Pathobiology at University of California, Davis in 2021 and joined the Li lab studying thrombosis and cardiovascular diseases. Her research interests include platelet activation and thrombosis in feline hypertrophic cardiomyopathy as a large animal model for human hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
Lunden Simpon, MS
Lab Manager
Lunden got her Master’s from Clemson University in 2018 where she focused on marine biology and disease ecology. She moved to North Carolina in 2019 and started working at Duke in an early-stage breast cancer research lab. She then transitioned to investigating the adaptive immune system and T-cell development. She joined the Li Lab in 2023 and is working to support her ever-growing menagerie of animals that currently includes 1 horse, 1 dog, and 6 cats.
Reagan Glass
DVM Student
Reagan is currently a veterinary student at NC State planning to focus in small animal medicine. She studied Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology at Duke University for my undergraduate degree, and she has one dog named Rollo!