Peng Gong: remote sensing of near climate change.

www.thelancet.com Vol 386 November 7, 2015 1815 Professor Peng Gong, Director of the Centre for Earth System Science at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, is one of the Co-Chairs of the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change. As such he’s had a key role in compiling its new report. But had it not been for a chance decision made some 35 years ago by an anonymous Chinese bureaucrat, he would almost certainly be working in some other branch of science. As a would-be student Gong had applied to study physics; instead, he was allocated a Nanjing University place in geography. Among the fi rst generation of his farming family to go to university, he swallowed his initial disappointment, no doubt recognising that a few years earlier his chances of getting any kind of higher education would have been slim. As it was, his student dissertation on the development of software for aerial mapping sparked an interest in remote sensing methods and their application. This led to a masters degree in which he explored remote sensing in the analysis of urban land use. From Nanjing, he went to the University of Waterloo in Canada to do a PhD on the more general place of satellite data in classifying land. With the future direction of his career now fi rmly set, he spent the next 20 plus years in teaching and research, fi rst at the University of Alberta and then, from 1994, at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, where he became a full professor in 2001. Gong entered remote sensing at just the right time, according to Professor Gregory Biging of Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. “He came to it when the technology was beginning to make the transition from a military thing to a civilian one.” It was through colleagues at Berkeley—and particularly the man he views as his mentor, Professor Robert Spear—that Gong became interested not only in environmental changes themselves, but in their consequences for human health. Spear, who works in Berkeley’s School of Public Health, needed someone with whom to collaborate in a research programme on environmental factors in the transmission of schistosomiasis in China. He wanted better data on the location of the sites of infection, and also felt that satellite imagery had a part to play in fully understanding the disease. Gong, he says, was the man to help. The collaboration, which was successful, gave Gong himself a broader view of his work. “It helped me to understand that we need to treat a lot of problems not through one discipline but through a multidisciplinary perspective”, he says. As Biging points out, remote sensing is a technology with many applications. “Peng’s amassed so much knowledge in so many fi elds that he’s now incredibly good at working across disciplines.” His remote sensing covers features of the urban as well as the natural environment. “But he’s more than just a user of the technology”, Biging notes. “He’s very innovative. He’s developed a lot of new techniques and new statistical approaches to improve our use of remote sensing.” In short, he’s one of the go-to people if you’ve got a new problem for which remote sensing might off er a solution. Gong is now back in China. “I never thought of leaving it forever”, he says. “It was natural for me to want to go back.” He’d always kept in touch, from the 1990s onward becoming involved with the creation and staffi ng of various new research institutions in China, and arranging exchanges between overseas Chinese researchers and their counterparts back home. In 2014, he relinquished his chair at Berkeley and took up his present Tsinghua University job full time. “He understands how to operate in the Chinese and the western system”, says Spear. At the Centre for Earth System Science, Gong and his colleagues monitor environmental change, support climate change modelling, and study the impact of such change on sustainability and on human health. As a member of the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change, Gong sees the health impact of climate change as having a central role in climate research. “But I think in many parts of the world we need to do more to make politicians and decision makers pay attention to health risks.” He hopes the Commission’s report will help move this agenda forwards. But is he optimistic? He points to discussions with US schools of public health initiated by President Barack Obama as a hopeful sign. What of the Chinese Government? “It certainly recognises the impact of pollution on health, and is trying to do something about it.” He glances up to look out through his offi ce window. “I’ve noticed the change in Beijing. I think the air quality is getting better. I can see blue sky.” But he still concedes that it’s hard to be entirely optimistic. “Peng’s very easy to get along with”, says Biging. “It’s really nice to sit down and just talk with him. Even though he has an enviable résumé he displays none of the big ego you fi nd in some people with achievements like his. He’s very approachable, he’s open, he has a fl exible and quick mind.” A hard worker? “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him not working.” So what does Gong do when he’s not at work? He enjoys travelling, he says, seeing diff erent cultures. But as he begins to talk of travel it’s in the context of research that involves mapping change on a global scale. You realise that even this is linked to work. Beijing, for the foreseeable future, will remain his base. “In the next few years, I need to build the Earth System Science programme at Tsinghua University.” Does he miss California? “Sometimes.” He laughs. “When the air pollution is bad I miss California.”