Xu Jia

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Xu Jia is a Principal Scientist at A*STAR IHDP. She leads microbiome research in two landmark multi-ethnic Asian cohorts – GUSTO and S-PRESTO – to map life-course gut–microbiome trajectories and their roles in women’s health, healthy ageing and child development, including neurocognitive outcomes. Her work has helped elucidate how early-life gut microbiome and antibiotic exposure influence childhood adiposity, and how infant gut microbiome diversity differs by ethnicity even before complementary feeding. She has also shown how gut microbiome–host interactions links to accelerated biological ageing and women’s reproductive health, and how the toddler gut microbiome may shape later emotional health via changes in brain network connectivity.

Xu has established an in-house longitudinal multi-omics workflow to identify and integrate biomarkers of microbiome–host crosstalk in disease and disorder development. This integrates shotgun metagenomics, metabolomics, proteomics, lipidomics and other deep phenotyping with advanced machine learning modelling and causal inference to move from association to mechanism exploration and to prioritise modifiable targets for precision prevention.

Her research is supported by an A*STAR Career Development Fund and National Medical Research Council Open Fund Young Individual Research Grant, and her work has been published in leading journals such as Nature Communications, Genome Medicine, Gut Microbes, International Journal of Obesity and ISME Journal. She collaborates with academic and industry partners to translate microbiome science into dietary and prebiotic strategies that support metabolic and brain health, and is extending her work towards healthy ageing.

Xu obtained her PhD from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.