Ying Xu has been a Chair Professor of the School of Medicine, Southern University of Science and Technology since 2023. He holds the Cheungkong Scholars Chair Professor and One-Thousand Chair Professor positions. He was a Regent Professor and the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar Chair in the Department of Biochemistry (2003–2022/12) and the Founding Director of the Institute of Bioinformatics, the University of Georgia (2003–2011). He is an AAAS Fellow and IEEE Fellow. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science (Combinatorics) from the University of Colorado in 1991. He joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1993 and worked there for ten years, climbing up the career ladder from a research associate and staff scientist to a senior staff scientist and group leader. He joined the University of Georgia in 2003 to establish the Institute of Bioinformatics and joined the Department of Biochemistry. In 2008, he began cancer research, focused on the driving forces and mechanisms for cancer formation and development. He expanded his research to include AD studies from 2022. He has published over 400 papers with an H-index of 72 and has given over 350 invited lectures and seminars. Since 2003, he has co-chaired the International Symposium on Bioinformatics (2003–2013) and the International Symposium on Systems Biology of Cancer (2011–) in China annually and lectured in summer courses on bioinformatics or cancer bioinformatics every year, which attracted over 30,000 attendees.