Professor Xiong received his Ph.D in Finance from Duke University in 2001. Prior to that, he earned Bachelor's degree from the University of Science and Technology of China and Master's degree from Columbia University, both in Physics. He is the Trumbull-Adams Professor of Finance and Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics and Bendheim Center for Finance, Princeton University. He is also Academic Dean of School of Management and Economics, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.

Professor Xiong is one of the world's most influential scholars in the area of finance. He has published in top economics and finance journals on a wide range of research topics, such as speculative bubbles, financial crises, behavioral finance, financialization of commodity markets, China’s financial markets, and data economy. He has received multiple prestigious awards, including the 2012 Smith Breeden Award (first prize) from the American Finance Association, the 2013 NASDAQ OMX Award from the Western Finance Association, and the inaugural Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Award in 2014 and the China Economics Prize in 2018. He has currently served as Co-Editor of The Journal of Finance, the flagship journal of American Finance Association, since 2016.