Xuemei Bai received her M.S. in aquatic biology from Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China and her Ph.D. in marine sciences from University of Southern Mississippi, Stennis Space Center in 2004. She held a MSN postdoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center where she worked with D. W. Coats on parasitism of the toxic, bloom-forming dinoflagellate Karlodinium veneficum. Dr. Bai is now a postdoctoral investigator in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California. Her research interests encompass ecological, physiological, and behavioral interactions that drive population dynamics of harmful algal blooms.