Birthday Celebration for Prof. Wing Hung Wong

The past few days have been really special for me and many others who were fortunate to celebrate Professor Wing Hung Wong’s birthday. He turned 70 and a symposium on Statistics and Data Science in Bioinformatics and Biomedicine was held at Stanford, where the speakers were mainly his former PhDs and Postdocs. It was a precious opportunity for me to talk to so many outstanding Wonglab alumni, who are now professors at Harvard, Berkeley, Duke, U Penn, Michigan, UCAL, UCSD, etc. I also felt very lucky to talk to many pioneers, such as Michael Waterman. As I accompanied Michael and several other professors back to hotel, I was reminded of the time when I learned the Smith-Waterman algorithm as a beginner in the field of computational biology.

I am still immensely fascinated by all the stories that the Wonglab members shared at the celebratory dinner. I could tell that Wing was so touched and happy to see all his former students, colleagues and friends gathered to honor his remarkable life and career. I was also moved when Wing got a bit choked up while giving a short speech. I want to say that Wing has always been a great mentor and role model who guides, motivates and inspires me. I really want to express my sincere gratitude for his guidance, motivation and inspiration. He taught me not only how to do research, but also the values and ethics of being a good scholar and a good person. I deeply appreciate all his help throughout my academic journey, and I hope to follow his footsteps and make him proud someday in the future.

Happy birthday to you, Wing!

At the symposium	At celebratory dinner!