When Denis Evseenko was a still a student at Novosibirsk State Medical University in southern Siberia, he began pondering the meaning of life.

“I was reading a lot of philosophic things [saying that] everything is pointless because you will die,” he said. “And the only one thing that makes it not completely pointless is that you can have a next generation. Kids will be born. Life will continue. So for me, this was such a big thing.”

The process of pregnancy and fetal development fascinated Evseenko not only from a philosophical perspective, but also from a biological one. So after earning his medical degree in 1999, he joined an embryology laboratory at the Scientific Center of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, also in his hometown of Novosibirsk. He studied how the human placenta regulates oxygen supply to the fetus and influences lifelong cardiac health.

Read more at stemcell.keck.usc.edu/from-babies-to-senior-citizens-denis-evseenko-is-working-for-better-outcomes.