Dr. Wei-Qiang Gao received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1989 and did his post-doctoral research at Columbia University and the Rockefeller University. From 1993-2010. He was a Scientist, Senior Scientist and Group/Project Leader at Genentech, Inc.. Dr. Gao has made important contributions to the fields of neuroscience, stem cells and tumorigenesis. In early 1990’s, he made important contributions to the mechanisms of cerebellar granule neuronal differentiation. His group then pioneered research on development and regeneration of inner ear hair cells at Genentech and changed the traditional view that mammalian inner ear hair cells cannot regenerate. He was invited to speak at the Nobel Conference “To Restore Hearing” organized by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden in 2002. More recently, his group also works on “cancer research and cancer stem cells”. Dr. Gao has published more than 120 papers as either corresponding or the first author, including Nature, Cell, Science, Neuron, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Communications, Cell Research, Gastroenterology, PNAS, J. Neurosci., etc. and has been granted 48 US patents and 3 China patents. He is a scholar of “National Talents Program”, the Chief Scientist of 2 program projects from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and 2 key grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China. He has served as a reviewer for grant proposals of Wellcome Trust in UK, NIH in US, and NSFC and 36 journals including Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Reviews Oncology, Nature Communications, Cancer Cells, Cell Reports, PNAS, J. Neurosci., etc..