Professor and Chair for Life and Physical Science

Dr. Xiangru Xu is currently a Professor and the Department Chair for Life and Physical Science at Post University while taking charge of the University-wide Science laboratories and was an Assistant Professor at Yale University School of Medicine and a Research Group Leader at Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing (Associate Professor). His research effort has been fully committed to the functional genomics, molecular genetics and epigenetics of mammalian aging and age-related chronic diseases. He has been trained as a molecular biologist and a functional genomics expert in cancer and stem cell research at Chinese National Genome Center at Shanghai with Dr. Zhu Chen. Then he came to Dr. Mark Mattson's lab at National Institute on Aging (NIA) of NIH pursuing his postdoc research on the topic of molecular insights in mouse brain aging by cutting-edge functional genomics approaches. The research in Xu labs at both Yale and MPI-AGE was focused on (1) dissecting the epigenetic mechanisms that underlie age-related functional decline in brain by cutting-edge technologies such as deep-sequencing approaches; and (2) identifying the human longevity genes by comparative functional genomics, and functional characterizing these target genes by genetic perturbations in cells/animals to elucidate their contributions to the mechanisms of cellular/organismal homeostasis in response to (environmental) insults, and their involvement into the incidence of age-related chronic diseases such as cancer, neurodegeneration and cardiovascular disease. It ended up with several targets validated, both in vitro and in vivo, and patented.

Besides the intensive research portfolio, Dr. Xu has sitting on the board of university/institute committees to evaluate/recruit graduate/medical students, and culture inclusion for both faculty and students, and to make the Master plan for the University Academics. Also as a lead to search and recruit faculty and develop courses, both lecture and lab, for life and physical sciences. Besides the administrative and management roles, Dr. Xu has developed and taught courses, in person and remotely, such as Molecular Biology, Genetics, Cell Biology, (Functional) Genomics, Biochemistry, Clinical Biochemistry, Developmental Biology, Biology of Aging, Epigenetics of Brain Aging and Medical Terminology for undergraduates and graduates including PhD and medical school students over a decade, while mentored/supervised undergraduate, graduate and medical fellow as well as postdoc in biomedical researches. Moreover, Dr. Xu led the effort to innovate the Bio-lab to a standard BSL2 teaching and research Lab and co-developed and launched the online Biology Degree program for Post University. And Dr. Xu is certified as a biological science Al trainer.

Dr. Xu has published a significant number of research papers including publications in Nature Genetics, Proceeding of National Academy of Science US, Genome Research, Genome Biology, PLoS Genetics and Journal of Biological Science. His publications had been highlighted and commented for the conceptual advance by several prestigious journals like New England Journal of Medicine and Nature Review Genetics. Colleague citation is a more critical influential and impact index of his works to the biomedical research, the citation number of his papers is over 4,000 times thus far. Notably, Dr. Xu as a co-inventor on 29 gene patents, a fact that reflects the cutting edge nature of his achievement. Dr. Xu has received numerous honors and awards including the most prestigious award for Ph.Ds and M.Ds, the Award of Top 100 National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation in all subjects by Ministry of Education in China, the visiting fellowship award from National Institutes of Health, and Ellison Medical Foundation Fellowship as well as the awards support from NIH and Max Planck Society.

Dr. Xu has been invited to give talks on international institutions and symposiums, and has successful teaching experiences in both lecturing to medical students and mentoring college and graduate students, and postdocs. Notably, he has established the extramural funding support and to provide professional services to the community as one of respectful peers in his field. For example, he has served as a reviewer regularly for national/international grant agency including NIH, MRC, Welcome Trust and Israel Science Foundation. Also reviewing the manuscripts for many international top-tier biomedical and aging research journals, such as Nature, Science, Genome Biology, PLoS Biology, STEM CELLS, Aging Research Reviews, Neurobiology of Aging, Mechanisms of Aging and Development, Journal of Neurochemistry, Neuromolecular Medicine, and International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience.