Obituary: Long-time faculty member Liang remembered for big smile, passion

Richard and Loan Hill Professor, UIC Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Quantitative Biology Jie Liang died Dec. 23, 2024. He was 60.

Liang joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering in 1999. At the time, he was one of three faculty members in the department. He quickly went to work improving and growing the field at UIC, including by leading the formation of both the doctorate and master’s degree programs in bioinformatics, among the earliest such programs in the nation. The Illinois Board of Higher Education approved the programs in 2003.

Meishan Lin, a biomedical engineering clinical assistant professor, former doctoral student of Liang’s and associate director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Quantitative Biology, said Liang once explained that he saw himself as an unusual pick for the department when he was hired because he wasn’t a biomedical engineer by training.

Liang received his bachelor’s degree in biophysics at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and both his master’s degree in computer science and doctorate in biophysics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“I think Department Head Richard Magin, at that time, saw the potential of his bioinformatics and computational biology research interests,” Lin said. “So, in Jie’s mind, that was a pretty big risk. It ended up being a very high-reward risk that the department took.”

The creation of the bioinformatics master’s degree and doctorate programs brought the establishment of research labs in bioinformatics, which was unconventional at the time among biomedical engineering departments. Liang was the visionary and pioneer behind the UIC Center for Bioinformatics and Quantitative Biology.

“It was more the faculty, especially Jie, who identified the importance of having this center to bring everyone doing bioinformatics and quantitative biology together,” Lin said. “We wanted to serve as a community and communications hub for people. We knew what we wanted to accomplish, such as offering seminar series, a student journal club and organizing a research day. Those all came from our discussions showing what will be the most important things to do. We’re still carrying on these activities now.”

A devoted researcher, Liang was known for his successful leadership, research grants, knowledge, expertise, insight, passion, open-mindedness and positivity.

“Jie was a real scholar, an exceptional colleague, a true professional and a wonderful human being,” said collaborator Simon Kasif, professor of biomedical engineering, bioinformatics and computer science at Boston University in Massachusetts.

UIC College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics Assistant Professor Konstantinos Chronis, a biomedical engineering affiliate faculty member and long-time collaborator of Liang’s, said that not long before Liang died, the two of them received the U.S. Department of Energy Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment award for a second time. The award is designed to enable researchers to pursue transformational advances in science and engineering and provides access to equipment from Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

“I have certainly learned from Jie’s grace, his big smile and love of learning,” Chronis said. “Jie was a phenomenal educator. A number of his students from the lab have gone on to do great things after graduating, with the way he shaped their academic thinking and problem solving. But the current generation of students I’ve seen, they try to approach things in the same graciousness as he did, in the same open and accepting attitude that he had.

“That, I believe, is a lasting legacy for him because when you see how people approach problems and you see him in them, it speaks volumes,” Chronis said.

Before joining UIC, Liang worked in industry as an investigator for SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals in the department of cheminformatics in King Prussia, Pennsylvania.

Lin said Liang told her that he was always interested in research. Even while working at SmithKline Beecham, he also worked on research on his own at night. Although he had an industry position, he kept pursuing an academic faculty position, Lin said.

Liang also was a visiting professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University Institute of Systems Biomedicine in Shanghai, China, and the University of Tokyo Department of Mechanical Engineering in Japan. Lin recalled a student taking Liang’s classes who applied to UIC because of what he had heard about Liang’s work. This student came to UIC specifically because he knew about Liang’s success and scholarship, Lin said.

During his career, Liang mentored graduate, postdoctoral and more than two dozen doctoral and MD/PhD students, some who later followed in his footsteps by becoming faculty members at universities including Columbia University, Washington University, Florida State University and UIC. Liang’s research over the years was consistently supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research and many other institutions. He authored hundreds of technical publications that have been cited approximately 15,000 times, with more than 1,000 citations in 2024 alone. Liang held many professional journal editorships and was a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. He chaired a major international conference held at the UIC Dorin Forum in 2019, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Biomedical and Health Informatics Conference.

“I just was so impressed with him as a faculty member, as a scientist and as a human being. He was a wonderful person,” said Pete Nelson, professor of computer science at UIC, Liang’s faculty mentor and the former dean of UIC College of Engineering. “He was someone that was always positive, even under difficult circumstances, and always had a good sense of humor. He didn’t take himself too seriously, even though he was, in my opinion, usually the smartest person in the room and not only that, but the nicest person in the room, too.”

“With Jie, I knew I was talking with someone who was not only brilliant, but also wise and compassionate,” said Tom Royston, professor and department head of biomedical engineering. “He was someone who measured his success not by what he accomplished as an individual, but by what we accomplished together, when that sometimes meant me or the bioinformatics faculty or the entire department, or sometimes the graduate students in bioinformatics whom he mentored and cherished. It also sometimes meant the broader group of faculty and students across UIC within the Center for Bioinformatics and Quantitative Biology.”

A memorial service to remember and celebrate Liang’s life will be held Friday, Feb. 21, at 11 a.m. at the Student Services Building East Atrium and Conference Rooms B/C. Please RSVP here by Feb. 17 at 5 p.m. if you plan on attending.