He is also the Director of Incubator Development and Programming at BioSpaceLA, the bioscience incubator coming soon to Cal State LA. He joined the faculty in 2004. Dr. Xu spent seven years in the biotechnology industry, engaging in discovery of novel antibiotics employing functional genomics, microbial physiology, assay development and high throughput screening approaches. Dr. Xu's research and student training projects are funded by grants from National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), U.S. Department of Education (DoEDU), California State University Program for Education and Research in Biotechnology (CSUPERB) and California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA). He received his Ph.D. in Microbiology from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at The Ohio State University.