Dr. Xiaoli Nan is a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and Professor of Communication Science at the University of Maryland. She also holds appointments as an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health and as a Faculty Associate of the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. Dr. Nan was the Director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication from 2011 to 2025. She was a full member of the Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Population Science Program from 2014 to 2024. Dr. Nan’s research centers on the science of persuasion—examining how people form and change beliefs and attitudes, and how these processes are influenced by persuasive communication. She applies this framework to examine the effects of health communication, misinformation, and emerging media, as well as the role of artificial intelligence in generating and evaluating persuasive messages. Her interdisciplinary work addresses urgent public health issues including cancer prevention, vaccination, pandemics, climate change, and food safety and nutrition. Dr. Nan teaches courses in health communication, persuasion and attitude change, media effects, and quantitative research methods. She has published extensively in her areas of specialization with over 90 peer-reviewed journal articles. Her work appears in top communication and interdisciplinary journals including Human Communication Research, Communication Research, Health Communication, Journal of Health Communication, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Advertising, Marketing Theory, Health Education, Social Science and Medicine, and Vaccine. Dr. Nan has been a Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Homeland Security, totaling over $10 million. She has served as a PI on four NIH-funded projects on cancer communication strategies. Dr. Nan’s current funded research addresses the role of artificial intelligence in supporting parental decision making about HPV vaccination. Dr. Nan is the recipient of several awards including the Mayhew Derryberry Award from the Public Health Education and Health Promotion Section of the American Public Health Association (2018), the Lewis Donohew Outstanding Health Communication Scholar Award from the Kentucky Conference on Health Communication (2020), and the Outstanding Health Communication Scholar Award from the Health Communication Division of the National Communication Association (2022).