Born in Beijing, China, Yiyang Gong immigrated to the UnitedDelaware at the age of eight where he completed elementary and middle school. He completed high school in New Jersey, and later studied at the California Institute of Technology for his Bachelor’s of Science in Electrical Engineering with a focus on optics. His current position as an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University was largely motivated by his postdoc, particularly the shift from electrical engineering to biomedical engineering, which allowed him to come into contact with protein engineering. His doctorate in electrical engineering facilitated the shift and acquisition of newfound skills and knowledge for the project, allowing him to enjoy the aspects of biomedical engineering within the project. He grew to love the field for its combination of different skills and interdisciplinary nature, especially since Yiyang values taking skills and techniques from various fields and combining them in creative ways to form a more sophisticated technique. It was biomedical engineering’s promotion of the integration of a variety of knowledge and experiences that ultimately shifted Yiyang’s focus from the field of electrical engineering to biomedical engineering.
Though the shift may seem stark and belated, Yiyang expounds that from a technical standpoint, many skills that he has learned and that others need to learn are quite simple as long as a solid foundation has been established. Even the more difficult ones are perseverance-based and only demand an open mind. Of his many acquired skills, he especially values communication and perceives it as a lifetime learning experience. By properly organizing one’s ideas and communicating them effectively, you can take the listener on a brief voyage that maximizes their information yield from your presentation, paper, or whatever medium of information you select. It is about giving them a solid foothold on the general and guiding them to the specific area of focus you would like to share and doing so intelligently.
His pursuit of research felt natural to him as he progressed through his undergraduate career. Despite the countless failures that arise as a researcher and the disappointments associated with those failures, the successes become that much more valuable and the progress that much sweeter. As long as individuals lower their expectations of quick successes and rapid accomplishments as a researcher, they can value the slow yet steady progress that results from pursuing research.
