Dr. Nan Xu is an Assistant Professor in the ​Fischell Department of Bioengineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, with a secondary affliate appointment in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and graduate program affliations in the Neuroscience & Cognitive Science (NACS), Biophysics, and Applied Mathematics & Statistics, and Scientific Computation (AMSC). She leads the Imaging- and Neuro-computations for Precision Informatics Research (INSPIRE) Lab. Dr. Xu’s research integrates expertise in computational science, statistical learning, applied mathematics, neuroscience, and biomedical applications. Her current work focuses on developing advanced computational models and analyses of functional neuroimaging data to gain new insights into brain function, neurological diseases, and broader informatics applications.

Nan earned a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Rochester in 2011. She completed her M.Sc. (2015) and Ph.D. (2017) in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University, with minors in both Applied Mathematics and Cognitive Neuroscience. Her interdisciplinary postdoctoral experience includes a fellowship in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech (2017-2018), a visiting scientist position at the McGovern Brain Institute at MIT (2022), and a postdoctoral fellowship in Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University (2019-2024). Her research is currently supported by the NIH BRAIN Initiative K99/R00 award.