Professor Xu has an excellent standing in the field of atherosclerosis with an outstanding scientific track record. He is part of a European Network of Excellence on vascular biology, which is a large consortium of experts. He is an expert in mouse models and in microsurgery. His group pioneers the study of heat shock proteins in atherogenesis and has established the first mouse model of vein graft atherosclerosis, which is proven to be powerful in studying the mechanisms of progenitor cells participating in atherosclerosis. Professor Xu’s group also generated the first PKC knockout mice and analysed protein profiles of cardiovascular cells in these mice.