Her research focuses on the discovery and functional analysis of toxin-antitoxin systems, ranging from their molecular mechanisms to their ecological roles in shaping phage-host dynamics and biofilm formation. She earned her bachelor's degree from Ocean University of China and her Ph.D. degree from Texas A&M University, USA. After that, she did here postdoctoral training at Rutgers University and Texas A&M University. At the end of 2011, she joined the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where she established the Marine Biofilms Research Group in Guangzhou, China. She has received the Young Thousand Talents Program award and the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholar. She has served as principal investigators for the National Key R&D Program and Fundamental Investigation program. She is a key member of the NSFC Outstanding Research Team Grant (A). She has published over 50 research papers (in the field of biofilm, toxin-antitoxin and prophage) as a corresponding or first author in journals such as Nature Ecology & Evolution, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Communications, PNAS, Nucleic Acids Research, The ISME Journal and Molecular Microbiology, and several review papers in FEMS Microbiology Review et al.