Her current research interests focus on privacy-aware computing, wireless and mobile security, smart cyber-physical systems, mobile handset networking systems (mobile health and safety), and algorithm design and analysis. She is the founder and steering committee chair of the International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems, and Applications (WASA, launched in 2006), and the co-founder of IEEE Symposium on Privacy-Aware Computing (PAC, launched in 2017).

She has served on the editorial boards of several technical journals (e.g. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE Wireless Communications) and the technical program committees of various professional conferences/workshops (e.g. ACM Mobihoc, ACM Mobisys, IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE ICDCS, IEEE ICC, IEEE/ACM IWQoS). She also has chaired several international conferences (e.g. IEEE CNS, ACM Mobihoc). Xiuzhen worked as a program director for the US National Science Foundation (NSF) from April to October in 2006 (full time), and from April 2008 to May 2010 (part time). She published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers. She is a Fellow of IEEE.