Xiaoming received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering with emphasis in thermal and fluid science from Xi’an Jiaotong University, China.
He completed his PhD with Prof. John C. Bischof at the University of Minnesota, working on understanding the thermal and injury kinetics in thermal therapy, including cryosurgery at the molecular, cellular, and tissue (in vitro, in vivo acute, and in vivo chronic) levels. He has also worked on understanding the development of thermal stress and the resultant mechanical injury during freezing biological materials.

Xiaoming joined the Center for Engineering in Medicine in July, 2004. Since then he has been working on a number of projects to develop novel biopreservation techniques to effectively preserve living materials in the cryogenic and/or desiccated state.

Xiaoming has worked intensively on understanding the physicochemistry and desiccation kinetics of biopreservation solutions. He established a set of models based on the free volume theory to be able to predict the water activity and mobility in biopreservation solutions and particularly their glassy state in a wide range of temperature and concentration encountered in both cryo and lyo preservation applications. He also developed numerical models verified using desiccation experiments performed with the aid of a microfluidic device, to investigate the desiccation kinetics of biopreservation solutions under various conditions. These studies clarified several factors that compromised previous unsuccessful desiccation protocols.

Xiaoming has also developed a novel and effective thermal poration approach to introduce trehalose, an effective bioprotectant, into primary hepatocytes, a critical step toward successful lyopreservation of hepatocytes for assisted hepatic tissue engineering.