Xu Zhang is a Visiting Junior Academic at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing from the 3^rd January to the 3^rd April 2017.

He is currently enrolled in a PhD programme at the Institute of Population Research, Peking University, China. His field of study concerns the health of elderly people and persons with disability, and the needs of Rehabilitation Assistance Devices for aged people with disability.

As an active researcher, he has published several papers in academic journals on research related to healthy ageing and rehabilitation for persons with disability. He is presently working on a paper titled "Multi-Level Research on Chinese Elderly Disabled People's Needs for Assistive Devices".