Looking across the table I see my grilled vegetable sandwich and my PI Dr. Gong. I wasn’t sure whether I was more excited to eat a meal I hadn’t cooked myself or to talk to my mentor. Turns out the sandwich had a much more short-lived impact than the wisdom Dr. Gong imparted on me during our lunch. Through our interview I was able to learn about Dr. Gong’s path to becoming a scientist and what he loves abut his work now.
Dr. Gong grew up and went to high school in New Jersey then travelled out west where he studied electrical engineering at Caltech for his Bachelor’s degree and then received his Doctorate from Stanford University in electrical engineering as well. One might wonder how he is now leading a biomedical engineering lab at Duke; the research his lab is focusing on is the characteristics of different fluorescent proteins and how they can be applied to different models to measure voltage and be imaged. This is related to his graduate schoolwork, where he focused on nanophotonics and how to compress light into small volumes or areas, because it combines biology with the aspects of light that Dr. Gong studied for a large period of his life. Dr. Gong describes his scientific career as somewhat atypical because he began with more physical sciences and then transferred to life sciences.
Currently I am wondering whether an advanced degree is a path that I want to take in my life and Dr. Gong provided me with two very important insights into my own life. The first thing was that I should pursue a higher degree depending on how I value successes and failures in my life. With experiences in both industry and research, Dr. Gong realized that to want and be successful with a Doctorate degree one should value discovery and exploration rather than a fixed result, and thus should be able to deal with failure well because research does not always lead to the desired results or goals of the experiment. The second key insight was that I should first determine what I want to achieve in life, such as if I want to invent or improve a medical device that will impact a large amount of people, or work in a business and have an impact on my small group of coworkers. Once I have determined what I want to do in life, I can then follow my passions and choose my major to achieve what I want to do in life. This was extremely helpful to me because I’m not entirely sure what I want to major in or do, but it helps simplify the decision making process.
Another one of the insights I gained from my interview with Dr. Gong is that I should expect changes and embrace them. In Dr. Gong’s life he has worked with photonics, audio, satellites, and now biology. He was always discovering and pursuing more knowledge.
Dr. Gong is teaching his first class next semester on fluorescent proteins to upperclassmen BME students. Hopefully in a few years I will be able to take his class! I’m grateful that through the HHRF program I have the opportunity to learn and be mentored by Dr. Gong.
