If Tianli “Sheldon” Ding needed any confirmation that he was on the right path in life, he got in the form of a diagnosis: leukemia.

When Ding was an undergraduate in college, stem cells in his blood betrayed him and turned cancerous. What happened next only made him more determined to study stem cells and use the science behind them to heal.

Watch below as Ding — who goes by the first name Sheldon — shares his journey as a Keck School of Medicine of USC master’s student in the USC Stem Cell program.