Xu Ruiming is a research fellow and doctoral supervisor at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Recognized for his exceptional contributions, he is the recipient of China’s National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Xu currently serves as the research group leader at the State Key Laboratory of Epigenetic Regulation and Intervention, dean of the School of Life Sciences at the University of Science and Technology of China and vice-dean of the College of Life Sciences at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS).

Xu’s academic journey began with a bachelor’s degree in physics from Zhejiang University in 1984. He pursued further studies in the United States from 1984 to 1989, earning both his MS and PhD degrees in physics from Brandeis University. Following this, he engaged in postdoctoral research at esteemed institutions such as the Department of Physics, the University of Texas at Austin (1989–91) and the Department of Physics and Astronomy, the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1991–93). 

From 1993 to 1996, Xu was a visiting scholar and research assistant at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he later joined the faculty, serving as assistant professor, associate professor and full professor from 1996 to 2005. He worked as a professor at the Grossman School of Medicine of New York University from 2006 to 2008 before returning to China to join the CAS Institute of Biophysics as a research fellow. Since 2016, he has served at the UCAS. 

Xu has long focused on the structural mechanisms of gene expression regulation. He has made multiple landmark contributions to epigenetic research using nucleosome and higher-order chromatin structures as the foundation.