Xiaotang received her PhD in Materials Engineering under Prof. Brian Korgel at the University of Texas at Austin. She then conducted her postdoctoral training in neuroscience with Prof. Jeff Lichtman at Harvard University before joining the faculty in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2025. She is passionate about functional nanostructures, including those in the brain. She is supported by the NIH BRAIN Initiative K99 award.