Dr. Lizhi Xie is an associate researcher from Astrophysics Center, Tianjin Normal University. She obtained PhD. From National Observatories of China and then moved to Astronomical Observatory of Trieste in Italy for postdoctoral research. As the core member of the GAEA team, she has led development regarding to star formation, black hole seeding, and environmental effects. Her research interests include galaxy quenching, gas contents, chemical evolution, and morphological evolution.Semi-analytic models (SAMs) provide one of the major theoretical tools to study galaxy evolution, and are widely used for generating mock catalogs in preparation for large-scale surveys. Since the first such framework was established, the rapidly expanding observational data have frequently challenged galaxy evolution models while also driving their development. This talk focuses on the physics of galaxy evolution that emerges from confronting such models with observed statistical results. More specifically, I will describe our improved treatments of star formation, environmental quenching, and morphological transformation within the framework of the GAlaxy Evolution and Assembly (GAEA) model, and how we use the model to interpret galaxy evolution.