Biography

Lihua Xiao is a professor at the South China Agricultural University. He received his Ph.D. and postdoctoral training in the United States and was a principal investigator at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USA from 1993 to 2018. For the past 25 years, he has focused primarily on genetics and genomics, host-pathogen interactions, and molecular epidemiology of foodborne, waterborne, and zoonotic parasites, particularly Cryptosporidium. He has published >400 original papers, including recent articles in Nature, Cell Host & Microbe, and Nature Communications. He is currently a section editor of Parasitology Research, associate editor of Frontiers in Microbiology, Animal Diseases, and on the editorial boards of several prominent journals in microbiology and parasitology, including Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Veterinary Parasitology, Experimental Parasitology, and One Health. He is a recipient of the Henry Baldwin Ward Medal from the American Society of Parasitologists (2012) and is one of Web of Science's Highly Cited Researchers (2018-2024).