Dr. Xudong Yao, born in October 1965, obtained his B.S. in synthetic polymer materials in July 1984 and M.S. in polymer chemistry in July 1987; both from Nanjing University in China. After working with the Department of Fiber Materials at China Textile University (now Donghua University) in Shanghai, he moved to the University of Maryland Baltimore County in the United States for doctoral studies in mechanistic enzymology with Prof. Ralph M. Pollack from August 1995 to October 1999. He then waded into the beginning streams of proteomics, and did postdoctoral research in mass spectrometry and proteomics with Prof. Catherine Fenselau in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland until March 2002. During that time, he co-invented a highly-cited quantitative proteomics technology of enzymatic ¹⁸O-labeling. Recruited by GeneProt, a Swiss company then in the spotlight, he flew to Geneva and made an ahead-of-its-time venture in the biggest gamble on proteomics industrialization. In October 2002, he joined Millennium Pharmaceuticals in Boston, continuing his industrial exploration in the uncharted land of biosimilarity of protein drugs using mass spectrometry. He resumed his academic pursuit in August 2004, joining the Department of Chemistry at the University of Connecticut where he currently is an associate professor. His research activities are centered on the development and application of novel mass spectrometry and omics technologies.