1963 - 2018
Yan Gao was born on October 25, 1963 in Pingba, Guizhou province, China. She grew up during the Cultural Revolution with a large family of six children. It was a tough time and place to grow up, and even years later, she would recount memories of collecting grass after school so the family could feed their livestock. She was nevertheless an extremely capable and industrious student, with great powers of concentration, and she excelled in Guiyang Medical University and became a radiologist in Guiyang. During this time, China started to import more advanced diagnostic and imagining technology and she took the opportunity to train in these new technologies in Tokyo, Japan and Beijing. These were her first times traveling and seeing the world outside of Guizhou and she was determined to have more such experiences. In 1998, she left her family and her job as the chair of the CT and conventional radiology department of a hospital in Guangdong to immigrate to the US, where her brothers Chao and Yuan received their doctorates and were establishing their own careers. She settled in Elmsford near her brother Yuan, but she was not able to practice medicine due to the US licensing system. She learned to drive and to speak English fluently, and established a second career as a researcher in a biochemistry lab at New York Medical College. Her husband Jiandong, also a doctor from China, and daughter Xinyi joined her in the US the following year. As tough as establishing a new mid-life career was, Yan still strived for more and pursued a degree in epidemiology at NYMC while also working full time. Graduating from her M.P.H. program was one of her proudest moments. She was also exceptionally proud of her daughter's graduation from Princeton University which Xinyi attributes to her mother sacrificing her weekends to take her to the public library during high school and teaching her statistics. She put her M.P.H. degree to use as a clinical research associate at Montefiore Medical Center. To many that knew her socially, she was ebullient, especially in sharing her love of Sichuan cuisine which she often craved since leaving her hometown. Towards the end of her life, she struggled with the pressures of her chronic illness but she never stopped trying new paths and exploring new domains of knowledge. She departed on January 29, 2018 and a burial service will be held on February 10 at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale. She leaves behind a memory of a vivacious personality that touched many people in her life. She will be missed by her siblings Yuan, Chao, Miao and Ming. Her husband and daughter hope that she has the best of everything as she begins her new journey into the next world.