Qianni earned her B.Sc. in Chemistry from Wuhan University before pursuing her Ph.D. at Boston College under the supervision of Dr. Eranthie Weerapana. Her doctoral research focused on profiling the ligandability of nuclear cysteine residues and investigating how these liganding events affect nuclear protein function. She joined the Zheng lab in September 2025, where she aims to develop small molecules to chemically restore the function of dysregulated nuclear protein mutants.