He received his Ph.D. in computer science with a minor in statistics from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities in 2005 under Vipin Kumar.

[1] Xiong became an assistant professor in the management science and information systems department of Rutgers Business School – Newark and New Brunswick in 2005.

Xiong served as deputy dean of Baidu Research Institute [3] and the founding head of business intelligence lab as well as the founding head of talent intelligence center of Baidu Inc. while on leave from Rutgers University.

[8] In 2018, Xiong served as a PC chair of the research track for the ACM Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD).

[10] He also served as an industry and government track co-chair of the 18th ACM Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD) in 2012.