Nianwei received his Ph.D. in genetics from the College of Medicine at the University of Florida, and got his postdoctoral training at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and Drug Safety Research & Development (DSRD) team at Pfizer.  In 2014, Nianwei and his business partners founded iXCells Biotechnologies, a cell biology and cell technology company dedicated to providing innovative pre-clinical drug discovery solutions with the focus on disease relevant cellular models to accelerate drug discovery processes. The company is specialized in development of Disease-in-a-dish models with its expertise in iPSC engineering and primary cell isolation for pre-clinical applications, including toxicology testing, personalized medicine development, target-based or phenotypic screening, etc..