Chunlei Li completed his bachelor and masters degrees in mathematics and cryptography in Hubei Univesity, Wuhan, China, in 2005 and 2008 respectively. During the master's program, he has been focusing on the design of cryptographically strong Boolean functions. Since 2011, he started his PhD program in the Selmer Center, Department of Informatics, University of Bergen, Norway. For the PhD research, his main focus was on the applications of highly nonlinear functions in signal design and coding theory.

After completion of the PhD program in 2014, he worked as a postdoc in the Centre for IP-based Service Innovation (CIPSI), the University of Stavanger during 2015-2017. He was back to Selmer Center, the University of Bergen as a postdoc, and later as a researcher during 2017-2018. Since May, 2018, he become an associate professor with University of Bergen