Ye Xia was born in China and obtained her Bachelor Degree and Master Degree in Plant Protection & Plant Pathology. She came to the United States to pursue her PhD at University of Kentucky in 2005 and received her PhD in Plant Pathology in 2010. From 2010-2015, Xia has been a post-doctor at the University of Kentucky. She has been an Assistant Professor in the Plant Pathology Department at OSU since 2015.

Her research has been focused on the biochemical, genetic, and molecular mechanisms as well as application of plant disease resistance and beneficial plant-microbe/microbiome interactions to improve plant health and yield for sustainable agriculture. Xia pursues two main research areas: Plant surface (fatty acid/lipid, cell wall, stomata, and cuticle) mediated plant immunity against diverse pathogens and mechanisms and improvement of plant immunity and yield by beneficial microbes from phytobiome. Xia has been recently published 10 times in PLOS ONE, Cell Host & Microbes, Frontiers in Plant-Microbe Interaction, Cell Report, Global Change Biology Bioenergy, Nature Genetics and Plant Physiology.