Xu Hongxing

Xu was born in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province in 1969. After graduating from Banpu High School in 1988, he was accepted to Peking University. In 1996, he pursued advanced studies in Sweden, earning his master's degree and doctor's degree from Chalmers University of Technology in 1998 and 2002, respectively.^{[citation needed]}

In August 2002, he was promoted to associate professor at Lund University. He returned to China in January 2005 and that year became a researcher at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He was deputy director of the State Key Laboratory for Surface Physics from 2007 to 2008 and director of Nanoscale Physics & Devices Laboratory from 2009 to 2014. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in May 2011. In September 2012, he joined Wuhan University as professor and director of Center for Nanoscience and Technology. He was appointed as a "Chang Jiang Scholar" (or " Yangtze River Scholar") by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China in 2014.^{[citation needed]}