Dian completed his Ph.D. in cancer biology at Stanford University with Dr. Monte Winslow and Dr. Julien Sage. He was awarded the Denise Chan Outstanding Thesis Award for identifying the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of how small cell lung cancer adopting neuronal migration machineries to metastasize. He then did his postdoc with Dr. Jonathan Weissman at the Whitehead Institute and MIT and developed a CRISPR-based evolving lineage tracing mouse model. This new mouse model enabled him to continuously track how a tumor evolves from a single transformed cell into an aggressive tumor and spreads systemically at an unprecedented resolution. His work to date has integrated CRISPR technologies, single-cell genomics, in vivo cancer modeling and computational analysis, providing a new paradigm to study tumor evolution. Dian recently won a Damon Runyon Jake Wetchler Award and a Dale F. Frey Award for Breakthrough Scientists.