Dr. Xiaowei Han graduated from Northwest A&F University with a BSc (Agri) in Plant Protection in 2010 and obtained an MSc in Natural Products Chemistry from Shandong University in 2013. He then went to Germany and worked on the model fungal pathogen Ustilago maydis as PhD student and later Postdoctoral Fellow under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Regine Kahmann at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg between 2013 and 2020. In June 2020, he joined Huazhong Agricultural University (HZAU) as Professor of Plant Pathology at the College of Plant Science and Technology and he is supported by several national and provincial programs. Currently, his research is focused on decoding the molecular dialogues between U. maydis and maize.