Xingli is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). He completed his B.Sc. (1^st class Honours) and M.Sc. degrees in Biology at the National University of Singapore in 2007 and 2010, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University in 2014.

Xingli’s research program at UTK focuses on characterizing and mitigating anthropogenic impacts on the environment with a particular emphasis on tropical and freshwater systems. His research combines field and experimental work with large continental-scale environmental, biological, and socioeconomic datasets to answer policy-relevant questions in conservation across multiple spatial scales. These projects span multiple ecological and human systems, including examining climate change impacts on stream fishes in the southern Appalachians and coal mining impacts on the environment, elucidating mechanisms of biotic community assembly and macroecological patterns, and mapping land-cover/use change and their ecological impacts in SE Asia.