PENG Xiujian is a full-time PhD candidate in the Department of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University. Ms. Peng was awarded Monash Graduate Scholarship and Monash International Postgraduate Research Scholarship in January 2001 by Monash University. Now, She is pursuiting her PhD under the supervision of the famous Economist, Professor Yew-Kwang Ng. Ms. Peng's research focuses on the relationship of Population growth and Environmental Change.

Before she enrolled at Monash University, Ms. Peng was a Lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Population Research, People's University of China. She taught Economics, Population Economics and Development Economics and conducted research in related areas. She has participated in a variety of projects on population and environment, population and economy and population and sustainable development sponsored by the Government and by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). More than twenty papers concerning these projects have been published.

Ms. Peng has a master's degree in Economics (1994) and attended a one-year Sino-American economic training sponsored by the Ford Foundation. She has also attended workshops such as PRB (Population Reference Bureau)'s workshop on The Communicating Population, Health and Environment Research with Policymakers; the East-West Center's Summer Seminar on population focusing on linkages between population, environment and health; World Bank's Workshop on Environmental Economics; an International Ageing Institute workshop on the economics of population ageing (UNFPA-Malta); and Sino-UNFPA's population and sustainable development workshops.