Xiaodong is a faculty member at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in the School of Oceanography. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography working with both Dr. Giddings and Dr. Falk Feddersen from March 2018 - December 2021 where he focused on regional ocean model development and studied transport processes in the San Diego region as part of the CSIDE project. He received a Masters degree in Marine Science at the Nanjing University in China and a PhD in Physical Oceanography from the University of South Carolina at Columbia. His research investigates the physical processes responsible for cross-shore exchange. He focuses on wind-driven circulation, submesoscale processes and baroclinic instability.