My name is Lili Yang.
I'm a, ah, assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
I'm running a research laboratory on genetically engineering the immune system to treat diseases.
We primarily focus on cancer and it's a broad range of cancer including the most common
ones like lung cancer, prostate cancer, and breast cancer.
I'm from China, a province called Yunnan so it's at the southwest part of China.
My home town is known for its good weather throughout the year, very much like here at
southern California.
Being a scientist give me the joy of discovery and of solving the mystery of life.
I first became interested in science, you know, when I was quite young.
If I have to site a moment, I would say it's the moment I watched the, you know, movie
Star Trek.
So to me that's about science.
It's very cool and it's something very interesting, you know, to work on.
What really matters to me is, you know, is that to see how certain diseases like cancer
affect people's life.
I think now a days almost everybody, you know, either have a direct a family member or a
friend or people you know, will suffer from cancer.
To me, a case that really touched me is about my college classmate and her brilliant girl
and a good friend of mine.
She was diagnosed with colon cancer during graduate school.
She fought very bravely but passed away in two years.
So that kind of case, you know, just, you know, frustrate me and make me thinking if
there was a cure she could have been still alive and with her happy family with kids,
with promising career.
So but this disease not let, just make a sudden stop of everything.
So I think that is the [maturation?]
keeping the work thinking that, wow, with all the knowledge we have learned there must
be, you know, something we can do, you know, for being a therapist.
My mission in the lab may be divided into two parts.
One part is research.
One part is the education.
Research the part that I develop new ideas.
I devise experiment.
I instruct my other people to conduct research.
The lab life in definitely not like a nine to five.
It's about continuously thinking about the scientific problem.
It's about careful design of the experiment and of course it's about the perfect execution.
My hope is to develop some novel therapies for the disease that currently, you know,
lack of treatment.
My dream is that one day I can receive a phone call or personal, you know, notice telling
me that my research has saved people's lives.
So to me that will be a really cool moment and it will justify all the effort I have
made.