Xuemei Bai has participated at all three Holcim Foundation Roundtables on “Re-materializing Construction” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2014), ETH Zurich (2015) and ILEK Stuttgart (2018).

She is also an Adjunct Professor at Beijing Normal University, China.

Her research interests include drivers and impacts of rapid urbanization in Asia; urban system performance including material and energy flows; land use and environmental planning; regional analysis and development; urban system dynamics, innovation and sustainability transition.

She studied science at Peking University and holds a Master of Engineering and PhD from the University of Tokyo.

She was previously Senior Principal Research Scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Japan, and Visiting Professor at Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

She is an appointed member of the Science Committee of Future Earth a new 10-year international research program on global environmental change where she is leading the development of an Urban Knowledge Action Network; and served as a Vice Chair of the Scientific Committee of the International Human Dimensional Program for Global Environmental Change. She was Lead Author for Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and Global Energy Assessment, and is published widely including in Nature and Science.

She is a Fellow of Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia since 2017, and was named one of the World's 100 Most Influential People in Climate Change Policy in 2019. She is the 2018 Laureate of the Volvo Environment Prize.