After his BS (1996) at Peking University, Xu had a plan for organic chemistry, only to join Stephen Lee’s group at Michigan and receive a PhD from Cornell for works on coordination networks (MOFs). After a postdoc with David Mitzi (IBM, 2001-03), he moved to George Washington University as an assistant professor to open his work on sulfur-equipped MOFs. As life would have it, he then started anew in Hong Kong (from 2005), became a professor in 2015, and relocated to Singapore in 2022. His group at IMRE/A*STAR carries forth the interest in bridging the two worlds of coordination and covalent frameworks, with focus on catalytic and (super)conductive properties.