Professor Yu Xiong is the Associate Vice-President for External Engagement at the University of Surrey. Previously, he served as the Associate Dean International from 2020 to 2022. Professor Xiong is the founding director of the Surrey Centre for Innovation and Commercialization and the founding director of the Surrey Academy for Blockchain and Metaverse Applications. Professor Xiong holds the Chair of Business Analytics at the Surrey Business School and is an academic member of the Department of Business Transformation. 

Before joining Surrey, he held positions at the University of York as an EPSRC Research Fellow, Queen's University Belfast as a Lecturer and Director of the China Management Research Institute, the University of East Anglia as an Associate Professor and Associate Director of External Engagement for Norwich Business School, and at Northumbria University as a Professor and Director of Enterprise Engagement, Faculty Lead for Knowledge Exchange, and Head of the Supply Chain Management Group. He is the Chair of the Advisory Board of the UK's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Metaverse and Web 3.0, and a Board member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Blockchain.

Professor Xiong's research focuses on sustainable and technological issues within global supply chains, and he has published in leading international journals such as the European Journal of Operational Research, Nature Communications, International Journal of Production Research, Journal of Business Research, International Journal of Production Economics, and the Journal of the Operational Research Society, among others. He has served as a guest editor for the International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Technovation, and the International Journal of Technology Management.

Professor Xiong's research has received funding from prominent organizations, including the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), Research England, the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, the British Academy, the British Council, the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, the Satellite Applications Catapult, and many more private companies. He was a Fellow of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership(2016-2023) and a Visiting Professor in Computer Science at the University of York, as well as a visiting professor at Durham University Business School. 

Professor Xiong has extensive experience working as a director and chair of companies in innovation commericialisation, sustainability, and blockchain. He is the Managing Director of OxValue.AI, a spin-out company from the University of Oxford, focusing on early-stage technology valuation.