Joined department in 2001

Professor Xu's current research focuses on the development of virtualization technologies for computer system security and for virtual distributed 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).

In 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). In virtual distributed computing, Xu and his students have been developing virtualization-based middleware that creates virtual networked environments on top of a shared physical infrastructure. His lab contributes to the development and deployment of the nanoHUB, one of the first production-quality virtualization-enabled cyberinfrastructures in operation.

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 affiliated with the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) and the Cyber Center. He is an Associate Editor of the Cluster Computing Journal (Springer) and has served on program committees of major distributed computing and security conferences (e.g., ICDCS, SC, NDSS, and WWW). Xu's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), IARPA through the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Office of Naval Research (ONR), Microsoft Research, and Purdue Research Foundation.