Zeng Yi graduated from Simon Fraser University in 2005 with a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of Stanford University from 2005 to 2010. She has been a research fellow and research group leader at Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences since April 2010. In 2016, she won the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars.