Xiaofeng was born in northern China and received his B.Sc. in Medicinal Chemistry from Peking University. For his graduate studies, he switched his subject of study to Materials Science and obtained a Ph.D from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICCAS) where he performed research on organic and inorganic hybrid materials. Xiaofeng then moved to Santa Barbara for post-doctoral study in the Bazan research group.