Jinxing Li

Research Scientist · Machine Learning  |  Space Physics

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Research Scientist

Persona Identities

San Francisco, CA, USA

I’m a Research Scientist at Persona Identities, where I build machine-learning systems to fight identity fraud. Before joining industry, I spent a decade as a researcher at UCLA, studying the physics of Earth’s radiation belts and magnetosphere using spacecraft data and large-scale data-driven models.

My research sits at the intersection of machine learning, plasma physics, and AI for real-world systems. I have led NASA- and NSF-funded projects developing neural-network models of the near-Earth space environment, and I have published in journals such as Nature Communications, Geophysical Research Letters, and JGR: Space Physics. More recently, I’ve been working on layout-aware representation learning for open-set fraud detection (CVPR/AI4RWC 2026).

I earned my Ph.D. in Space Physics from Peking University in 2015, with a visiting year at UCLA under Prof. Richard Thorne, and a B.S. in Applied Physics from Xi’an Jiaotong University.

Outside of research, I serve on the boards of several Chinese-American scientific and alumni organizations, chairing scholarship programs that support students in STEM.

news

Feb 01, 2026 New paper accepted at the CVPR / AI4RWC 2026 workshop: Layout-Aware Representation Learning for Open-Set ID Fraud Discovery.
Nov 01, 2025 Joined Persona Identities as a Research Scientist, working on machine learning for identity fraud detection.
Sep 01, 2025 I gave a TEDx talk on Sound of Space and Predicting Space Environment with AI
Jul 15, 2025 New paper out in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences: a comparative study of MLP, CNN, LSTM and Transformer networks for modeling magnetospheric ion distributions.
Jun 01, 2024 Two new papers on chorus spectral gaps and the fine structure of magnetosonic waves published in JGR: Space Physics.

selected publications

  1. Layout-Aware Representation Learning for Open-Set ID Fraud Discovery
    Jinxing Li, N. Ren, H. Pan, and 2 more authors
    In CVPR / AI4RWC Workshop, 2026
  2. Neural Network-Based Modeling of Magnetospheric Ion Distributions: A Comparative Study of MLP, CNN, LSTM and Transformer Networks
    Jinxing Li, Jacob Bortnik, Q. Wang, and 2 more authors
    Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, 2025
  3. Origin of two-band chorus in the radiation belt of Earth
    Jinxing Li, J. Bortnik, X. An, and 3 more authors
    Nature Communications, 2019
  4. GRL
    Formation of energetic electron butterfly distributions by magnetosonic waves via Landau resonance
    Jinxing Li, B. Ni, Q. Ma, and 8 more authors
    Geophys. Res. Lett., 2016