Joined department: 2001

Professor Xu's current research focuses on the development of virtualization technologies for computer system security and for cloud computing. He has also made early contributions to the area of peer-to-peer media streaming and distribution. He leads the Lab for Research in Emerging Network and Distributed Systems (FRIENDS).

For computer system security, Xu and his students have been developing virtualization-based systems for capturing, investigating, and defending against stealthy computer malware (e.g., worms, rootkits, and bots). His team is also developing reverse engineering techniques for the analysis of binary artifacts such as binary programs and memory images. For cloud computing, Xu and his students have been developing advanced techniques for the creation, management, and performance optimization of virtual networked infrastructures on top of physical cloud infrastructures.

Xu received the C.L. and Jane W-S. Liu Award from the Department of Computer Science at UIUC (2000), three Seed for Success Awards from Purdue University (2004, 2008, 2008), a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (2006) and the Best Paper Award from the Symposium on Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection (RAID 2008). He is an assistant director of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS). He is on the Editorial Board of the ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS) and has served on program committees of major distributed computing and security conferences (e.g., NDSS, Oakland, SOCC, and HPDC). Past and current sponsors of Xu's research include the AFOSR, AFRL, Army CERDEC, DARPA, IARPA, NSF, ONR, DOCOMO USA Labs, Microsoft Research, Northrop Grumman, Southwest Research Institute, and Purdue Research Foundation.