Dr. Xiaoli Nan is a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and Professor of Communication Science at the University of Maryland-College Park. 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.

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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. At the University of Maryland, Dr. Nan teaches courses in health communication, persuasion and attitude change, media effects, and quantitative research methods.

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Dr. Nan has published extensively in her areas of specialization with over 90 peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr. Nan’s 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.

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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 (DOE) 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.

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Dr. Nan was a senior editor for the journal Health Communication from 2018 to 2023 and has served on the editorial boards of several academic journals including Human Communication Research, Communication Research, the Journal of Health Communication, and the Journal of Advertising. She was an elected member of the executive committee of the Communication Theory and Methodology Division of AEJMC and served on the research committee of the American Academy of Advertising. Dr. Nan previously served as the Vice-Chair and Chair of the Health Communication Division of the National Communication Association.

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Dr. Nan is the recipient of several awards including the Mayhew Derryberry Award (honoring outstanding contributions to health education research theory and recognizing outstanding behavioral scientists) 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).