Dr. Xia is the Brock Family Chair and Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Eminent Scholar in Nanomedicine in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, with a joint appointment in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Dr. Xia received his Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from Harvard University (with Professor George M. Whitesides) in 1996, his M.S. degree in inorganic chemistry from University of Pennsylvania (with the late Professor Alan G. MacDiarmid, a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 2000) in 1993, and his B.S. degree in chemical physics from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 1987.  He came to the United States of America in 1991.

Dr. Xia has received a number of prestigious awards, including AIMBE Fellow (2011), MRS Fellow (2009 ), NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2006), Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award (2005), Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar (2002), David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (2000), Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (2000), NSF Early Career Development Award (2000), ACS Victor K. LaMer Award (1999), and Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award (1997).

Dr. Xia has been an Associate Editor of Nano Letters since 2002, and has served or is serving on the Advisory Boards of Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2011-), Advanced Healthcare Materials (2011-, inaugural chairman of the advisory board), Accounts of Chemical Research (2010-), Chemistry: An Asian Journal (2010-), Cancer Nanotechnology (2010-), Journal of Biomedical Optics (2010-), Nano Research (2009-), Science of Advanced Materials (2009-), Nano Today (2006-), Chemistry of Materials (2005-2007), Langmuir (2005-2010), International Journal of Nanoscience (2004-), International Journal of Nanotechnology (2004-), and Advanced Functional Materials (2001-). He has also served as a Guest Editor of special issues for Advanced Materials (six times), Advanced Functional Materials (one time), MRS Bulletin (one time), and Accounts of Chemical Research (one time).