Xu, Shengyong obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1999 from the Department of Physics, National University of Singapore. In 1999-2001 he worked at the "Center for Superconducting & Magnetic Materials", National University of Singapore as a Research Fellow. In 2001-2006 he worked at the Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, USA as a postdoctoral researcher and then at "Center for Nanoscale Science", Pennsylvania State University as a Research Associate. Since April 2006 he has been teaching at the School of Electronics, Peking University.

Prof. Xu has years of experience in epitaxial superconducting thin films (YBCO, MgB2) and nanowires (Zn, Sn, etc.), nanomaterials and micro/nano-devices. Presently his team works on the physical mechanism for generation and transmission of pulsed electromagnetic waves in neurons, brain and among cells, and micro/nano-sensors for real-time 2D, 3D mapping of thermal and electrical fields.

Prof. Xu and his coworkers have presented an original model for soft-material waveguide, where they address 3 major roles a cell membrane plays for electrical communication in a natural biosystem, i.e., the framework for a capacitor-like electrical power supply with a transmembrane gradient of ion concentration, the framework for embedded protein ion-channels which generate transient transmembrane ionic currents thus pulsed electromagnetic (EM) wave when triggered open, and, the framework of soft-material EM waveguides for transmission of the soliton-like, pulsed EM waves. The electrolyte-membrane-electrolyte sandwich structure allows a perpendicular pulse of electric field, which is generated by the embedded ion-channels, propagate much longer distance along the membrane than in other directions. This model explains well some interesting phenomena in biosystems, for example, transmission of action potential between two nodes of Ranvier in a myelinated axon, simultaneous triggering of billions of ion-channels within 1 ms in an electric eel, and transmission of electric signals among normal cells of both animals and plants. The results shed some light on the physical mechanism of muscle, heart, and brain.

Prof. Xu’s team also developed the smallest thin-film thermocouples (TFTCs) with width < 150 nm, a variety of real-time 2d mapping techniques for local temperature distributions, and double-stabilized systems with thermal noises as small as ± 5 mk near room temperature, so that the slight increment of local temperatures for cultured individual cells, in the order of 50-300 mk, has been detected. these development leads to smart probes for measuring inner 3d fields of live animals.

Prof. Xu has coauthored more than 140 research papers with a total SCI citation > 2000 times and an h-index of 24, and over 70 international conference presentations.