Shuhai Xiao is Professor of Geobiology in the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia. He received his B.Sc. degree from Peking University (Beijing, China, 1988) and Ph.D. from Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 1998). In the past 10 years, he has been working on the biological and environmental evolution in Earth's early history. His recent work focuses on Ediacaran paleobiology and he has spent many field seasons in China collaborating with paleontologists in China.