Lihua Xiao

Lihua Xiao is a professor at the South China Agricultural University. He received his Ph.D. and postdoctoral training in the United States. From 1993 to 2018, he was a principal investigator at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 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. His recent Cryptosporidium research includes evolutionary genomic characterization of host-adapted and hypertransmissible subtypes, development of tractable animal models for biological studies, and identification of determinants of host infectivity and virulence using forward and reverse genetic tools. Dr. Xiao 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 Food and Waterborne Parasitology, Animal Diseases, and Frontiers in Microbiology, and on the editorial boards of several other microbiology and parasitology journals. Dr. Xiao received the Henry Baldwin Ward Medal from the American Society of Parasitologists in 2012 and was named a Highly Cited Researcher by Web of Science from 2018 to 2024.