Xiaoyu studied chemistry at Wuhan University where she received her Bachelors in 2009. She then went on to pursue doctoral studies with John Fourkas and Wolfgang Losert at the University of Maryland, developing photolithography methods for nanoscale patterning which she used to discover the ability of cells to navigate along repetitive features smaller than their own length scales. She obtained her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2015, before joining the Alushin lab in 2017. Xiaoyu received a Pels Family Center Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2019. Her current work in the lab focuses on understanding how proteins from the LIM domain superfamily detect tension in actin filaments through direct binding interactions to initiate downstream signaling processes, using biophysical, structural, and cell biological approaches.