Ji was born and raised in Wuhan, China. He received his PhD degree from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, under the supervision of Prof Adriaan J Minnaard and Prof Martin D Witte. During his PhD, he majorly worked on the regioselective modification of carbohydrates. In October 2020, he joined the group of Prof Mark Nitz at the University of Toronto as a postdoc, where he started the research of developing new bench stable radical precursors for carbon-carbon bond formation.