Leiguang Gong

Pioneering Computer Scientist and Bridge Between Two Worlds, 1949-2023

Dr. Leiguang Gong, an accomplished computer scientist who pioneered the development of computer decision support for medical imaging systems using advanced machine learning and graphics modeling methods, Emeritus Senior Research Fellow at IBM Watson Research Center, and Visiting Professor at Jilin University in Changchun, China, passed away on September 26, 2023 at his home in Gloucester, Virginia. He was 74.

Born in 1949 in Andong (presently Dandong), Liaoning Province, China, Dr. Gong was one of six children, with two older brothers, two younger brothers, and a younger sister. His father Lei Gong and mother Guang Shan both fought in World War II against the Japanese Occupation forces. Dr. Gong's childhood was marked by the revolutionary periods in the post-war China. His family experienced the boom and bust cycles of the Great Leap Forward, the Great Chinese Famine, and most significantly, the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Just as he was about to start college in 1966, all the schools in China shut down as the Cultural Revolution began. For the next few years, along with a group of other teenagers, he went to the countryside and lived the life of a peasant farmer while his parents endured persecution in the city. For all its emotional challenges and physical hardship, he remembered this period for the lifelong friends he made and falling in love with his wife, Yingming Zhao. In 1970, Dr. Gong returned from the countryside and started working at the Changchun Radio Factory. Finally, the opportunity came in 1973 for him to return to college, and in 1977, he graduated from Jilin University and became one of the first Chinese students of his generation to earn a college degree. That same year, Dr. Gong married Yingming Zhao, his high school sweetheart, and had a son, Donglai Gong.

As a young lecturer at Jilin University in 1980, Dr. Gong was asked to serve as translator for one of the first delegations of U.S. scholars visiting China since the normalization of diplomatic relationships between the U.S. and China the year before. Having studied Radio and Electrical Engineering in college and graduating at the top of his class, he was responsible for translating technical lectures as well as serving as an everyday guide for the visiting scholars. One of the visiting scholars was Professor Casimir Kulikowski of the Department of Computer Science at Rutgers University. Between their daily conversations, technical discussions, and strong desire to connect across geopolitical and cultural boundaries, Dr. Gong and Professor Kulikowski became fast friends during the visit. Despite their vastly different early-life experiences, they shared common values in family, life, and the pursuit of scientific knowledge. This meeting would pave the way for a lifelong friendship and future academic endeavors and would forever change the trajectory his family's future.

In 1982, Dr. Gong accepted an opportunity to go the U.S. to pursue advanced graduate studies with Professor Kulikowski. Dr. Gong received his Master of Science (1984) from Rutgers University and returned to China where he served as a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at Jilin University. He returned to the U.S. in 1988 to begin his doctoral study with Professor Kulikowski. Dr. Gong brought his wife and son to the U.S. in 1989, marking the beginning of his family's roots here. He received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1992. His doctoral dissertation, entitled "Composition of Image Analysis Processes through Object-Oriented Hierarchical Planning," involved developing an innovative set of machine learning techniques for interpreting Magnetic Resonance Images of the brain, heart, and other organs with graphical anatomical models for interpretation of medical images and disease diagnosis. It was a novel and powerful general approach to leveraging graphical and AI machine learning models for image analysis, combining great insight into the ways in which different modalities of imaging could be related to construct realistic models for investigational and clinical use.

Dr. Gong continued to contribute substantially to the field of computer science throughout his career. He served as Assistant Research Professor at Rutgers University (1992-1996), researcher at Bell Labs at Lucent Technologies (1996-2000), and Senior Research Fellow at IBM's Watson Research Center (2000-2014). During his initial work at Jilin University, Dr. Gong helped translate the book on Expert Systems by Weiss and Kulikowski and was instrumental in fostering a long term, 40-year collaboration between Jilin and Rutgers Universities. His decades of research collaboration with Professor Kulikowski led to many fruitful student and faculty exchanges. The collaborations he fostered between the USA and China produced many innovative results and resulted in publications in the journals BMC Bioinformatics, the Chinese Journal of Electronics, the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM), and major conferences such as the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) and the European Conference on Computer Vision (EECV). Dr. Gong also collaborated with Dr. Reuben Mezrich of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and became a very active and productive investigator in the Rutgers AI in Medicine Research Resource for over three decades, working with his dissertation adviser Professor Kulikowski on numerous biomedical imaging and AI projects, including collaborations in Asia as well as Europe. During the early 2000s, he served as a Dean of Engineering at Shantou University, which resulted in subsequent research at Rutgers University with his student Baiyang Liu (now professor) and Professor Kulikowski on a highly influential and cited work on Robust and Fast Collaborative Tracking of Subjects and Objects (in Videos) using a novel Two-Stage Fast Optimization methodology. Later Dr. Gong directed research at Yantai University as well as Jilin University on the use of ontologies for medical imaging while promoting collaborations on computer imaging and AI research with Rutgers University and IBM research laboratories. Dr. Gong's contributions to the scientific and technological advances of AI in Imaging and its software engineering produced many novel, effective, and efficient algorithms still in use today.

After retiring from IBM in 2014, Dr. Gong founded Huashen Information Technology Limited, an internet technology startup company in China, which developed several products, including a smart kitchen safety device, a platform for natural language interface for databases, a knowledge-based platform for (large) equipment and device maintenance, scheduling, and management as well as a smart system for power consumption monitoring and management. His entrepreneurial endeavor was driven by his desire to apply his knowledge and expertise to develop practical solutions to real world problems. His creative insights, generous sharing of ideas, and deep international friendships will be sorely missed by his many collaborators in computer science, medicine, and engineering.

Dr. Gong was deeply committed to his family and friends. He always lent a helping hand to those in need regardless of their creed or social status. He was a man with strict self-restraint and rock-solid integrity, deeply respected by his colleagues, classmates, friends, and family. He was a respectful and obedient son, a caring husband, and a devoted father and grandfather. Inspired by Dr. Gong's work, his son, Donglai Gong, has pursued a career in scientific research at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science - William & Mary in Gloucester, VA. Dr. Gong cherished his three grandchildren, Leirun, Huashen, and Odin Gong, who were his absolute pride and joy. Dr. Gong also cared deeply about the two countries that he spent his life in. Dr. Gong believed that a strong and healthy United States-China relationship and positive diplomacy between the two countries would benefit the whole world.

In June 2021, Dr. Gong was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Over the next two years, with the help and support of his family, he fought the disease with every ounce of his energy and spirit. He was never afraid to go, but dearly regretted not being able to see his grandchildren growing up. Along with his family, he made a final farewell visit to China in the summer of 2023 to see his brothers, sister, nieces, and nephews. Having lived a full life that positively impacted all those who knew him, his battle with cancer ended on September 26, 2023. He passed away peacefully in his home, surrounded by his loving wife Yingming, his son Donglai, and his daughter-in-law Livia. In his passing, Dr. Gong left a legacy of knowledge-seeking, perseverance, and hope that bridges between two worlds.

In memory of Dr. Gong, donations to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network are welcome.

For memorial service information, please contact memorial@gongfamily.net.