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About
Dr. Sandy Li grew up in Brookline — she moved from China to Massachusetts in high school — and spent the middle of her career running Shady Grove Fertility’s Chinese Patient Program in Maryland, the unit inside one of America’s largest fertility networks built for Mandarin-speaking patients. She has also been invited to lecture on infertility at academic centers across China. The result is a physician who genuinely practices in two patient cultures: American protocol expectations and the family dynamics, questions and communication style Chinese-speaking patients bring to an IVF consult.
Her training is fully US-based with a research spine: Brandeis (biology and biochemistry double major), a master’s in medical science at Boston University, MD at Drexel University College of Medicine, OB/GYN residency at Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital, then faculty at UCLA where she saw OB/GYN patients and ran endocrinology research in the STAR program, and an REI fellowship at Duke University, where her thesis examined the role of calcium channels in uterine contractions — the mechanism layer beneath contraction disorders that affect implantation and preterm labor.
She is a Fellow of ACOG and a member of ASRM, with published work on IVF, donor egg treatment, and fresh versus frozen embryo transfers — the latter a live strategic question for every stimulation patient. Honors include the Pfizer/SRI President’s Presenter Award (2018), a Pacific Coast Reproductive Society Scholarship (2017) and Duke’s Charles Hammond Research Fund award (2017). She sees patients at Boston IVF’s Downtown Boston and Stoneham centers, in English or Mandarin, with telehealth across Massachusetts. Boston, she notes, is where she considers home; returning felt like coming back.
Clinical Expertise
- Mandarin-Bilingual IVF Care: Full consultations, consent and counseling in Mandarin — not interpreter-mediated
- Donor Egg Treatment: Published research, practiced clinically at scale
- Fresh vs Frozen Transfer Strategy: One of her published topics; the choice shapes staging, cost and OHSS risk
- IVF and ICSI: Cycle management across the network’s two northern sites
- Uterine Contractility and Implantation Biology: Her Duke thesis topic — calcium-channel mechanisms in contractions
Why Choose Dr. Sandy Li
She ran the program. Chinese Patient Program director at Shady Grove means she built the workflows, not just spoke the language.
Lecturer in China, practitioner in Boston. Invited academic talks at Chinese centers cut both ways: she explains US care to internationally-minded patients better than anyone who never crossed the Pacific.
Awarded researcher at every stage. The Pfizer/SRI presenter prize, PCRS scholarship and Hammond research award track a career that kept publishing through fellowship and practice.
Thesis-level knowledge of the uterus itself. Uterine contraction biology is her formal specialty within reproductive endocrinology.
Professional Affiliations
FACOG; member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Former clinical faculty at UCLA (STAR program). Multiple research manuscripts and book chapters on IVF, donor egg therapy and embryo transfer strategy; invited lecturer at several academic centers in China.
Suitable For
- Mandarin-speaking patients: Consult, monitor and decide in your own language
- Chinese-American families where grandparents sit in on decisions
- Internationally comparing patients weighing US treatment against options in Asia
- Donor egg and frozen-transfer decisions guided by published evidence