Tingye Li is a Division Manager in the Communications Infrastructure Research Laboratory of AT&T Labs at Red Bank, New Jersey. He joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1957 after receiving his Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

He has worked in the areas of microwave antennas and propagation, lasers and optical communications, and has published more than 100 journal papers, patents, books and book chapters. Since the late 1960s, he led various groups that pioneered and advanced lightwave technologies and systems, which are currently deployed in telecommunications networks worldwide.

He is a Fellow of OSA, IEEE, AAAS, and PSC, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Academy Sinica (Taiwan) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Among the many awards he has received are: the IEEE 1975 W. R. G. Baker Prize, the IEEE 1979 David Sarnoff Award, the 1979 Achievement Award from the Chinese Inst. of Eng./USA, the 1981 Alumni Merit Award from Northwestern University, the 1983 Achievement Award Chinese-American Academic and Professional Association, the OSA/IEEE 1995 John Tyndall Award, the OSA 1997 Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus Quinn Endowment, and the 1997 AT&T Science and Technology Medal.

He was named an honorary professor at many universities in China and was granted an honorary doctorate in engineering by National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. He has been active in various professional societies, and was President of the Optical Society of America in 1995.