Dr. Xi Huang, Ph.D.

Founder & President, FE:I Beauty Tech, Inc.

Xi Huang, B.S., M.S., Ph.D. is the founder and president of FE:I Beauty Tech, Inc., the parent company of i-On® Skincare, a groundbreaking new beauty brand featuring proprietary age-disrupting technology stemming from over three decades of research.

With work credited in more than 80 publications, Dr. Huang is one of the world’s leading researchers on the correlation between iron levels and health. As part of his extensive research, Dr. Huang found that excess iron is an important risk factor in women’s health, specifically in relation to menopause. In studying the implications of high iron build up during and after menopause, Dr. Huang discovered that the amount of ferritin (an iron storage protein with a capacity of binding up to 4,500 molecules of iron per molecule of ferritin) accumulated in the skin increased by 40 percent during a 10-year transition period from pre-menopause to post-menopause. Knowing that skin is the largest organ of the human body and the body can only excrete iron through menstruation and desquamation (skin peeling), he focused his next phase of research on whether the higher levels of iron were caused by the cessation of menstruation or hormonal changes, ultimately proving that excess iron caused by the cessation of menstruation is a root cause of skin aging and photo-aging.

Having established iron in ferritin as a root cause of skin aging and photo-aging, in 2012, Dr. Huang began the difficult work of developing a topical product that could remove excess excreted iron without affecting the essential iron needed by the body. Building upon some of his earlier discoveries around iron levels and health, Dr. Huang developed De-Ironizing Inducer (DII®) technology, which can safely neutralize excess excreted iron and prevent the formation of the free radicals that cause skin aging. This DII® technology is the cornerstone of FE:I Beauty Tech’s new i-On® skincare brand, which inactivates iron in the skin to prevent and reverse the signs of aging.

Dr. Huang’s early work—for which he earned master’s and PhD degrees in toxicology and applied pharmacology at the Université Paris VII—focused on environmental and occupational medicine in which he identified bioavailable iron in coals as a major active compound in black lung disease. It is in this work that Dr. Huang made the important discovery that calcite naturally found in certain coals, such as those from Utah and Colorado, inhibits the bioavailability of iron, resulting in lower incidence of black lung disease. This discovery of a compound able to safely inhibit the harmful effects of iron helped lead to the creation of DII® technology.

In addition to leading FE:I Beauty Tech, Dr. Huang is an active participant in the research and innovation communities. He has been a reviewer for more than 30 peer-reviewed journals, including the Lancet, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and Cancer Research. He also serves as the chief technology officer of Ex Vivo Dynamics, Inc., where he guides the development of a medical device that will improve blood transfusions.