Ying Qilong graduated from the First Military Medical University of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 1985 and obtained a doctorate from Shanghai Medical University in 1995. He did postdoctoral research at the University of Edinburgh.

Dr. Ying proposed the ground state of embryonic stem cell self-renewal in a paper published in Nature in 2008 and was the founder of culturing and maintaining stem cell pluripotent differentiation.

Dr. Ying is a lifelong professor at the University of Southern California and has long been committed to embryonic stem cell research. In 2016, his research on the totipotent mechanism of embryonic stem cells was awarded the McEwen Award for Innovation, the highest honor bestowed by the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) and the highest award in the field of stem cell research in the world.