Dr. Xu is a fellowship-trained neurosurgeon with expertise in cerebrovascular and endovascular neurosurgery, and skull base pathologies. Dr. Xu completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard College, and attended medical school at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he also obtained a Ph.D. in pharmacology and molecular sciences. He continued his residency training in neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, and remained there to complete a fellowship in cerebrovascular and endovascular neurosurgery. 

Our laboratory focuses on the pathways of neuroinflammation after ischemic stroke and molecular mechanisms underlying trigeminal neuralgia. Our laboratory has authored or co-authored over 250 manuscripts, and has published in journals such as Nature, Cell, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Science Signaling, Neuron, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the Journal of Neurosurgery, Neurosurgery and other journals. Clinically, our laboratory studies the long-term outcomes of patients with cerebrovascular disorders and trigeminal neuralgia.