Ying Cao earned his Bachelor’s degree from the Ocean University of Qingdao in 1989, and his Master’s degree from Huazhong Agricultural University in 1994. He pursued his doctoral studies at the University of Essen in Germany, and graduated summa cum laude with a Ph.D. degree in 2002. From 2002 to 2008, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Biochemistry, Ulm University in Germany. In October 2008, Dr. Cao established his laboratory at the Model Animal Research Center of the Medical School, Nanjing University. He and his team focus their research on developmental biology and cancer cell biology. Dr. Cao’s research has led him to propose that “tumorigenesis represents a process of loss of original cell identity and gain of properties of neural stemness” and “neural stemness represents the ground or basal state of tumorigenicity and differentiation potential.”