Qi received his PhD from the Computer Science Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2020,
where he was advised by Professor Carl Gunter.
His research considered a variety of challenges related to security the Internet of Things.
To this end, Qi collaborated with the STS Lab to investigate how provenance-based solutions can be integrated into IoT as well as network infrastructure.
Following his graduation, Qi joined the technical staff of Stellar Cyber.