He joined Mihaylo College in 2011. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Professor at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He earned his Ph.D. from University of Southern California in 2005, and B. Eng. from Zhejiang University in China Before starting his graduate studies, Gong was a research assistant at Unirule Institute of Economics in Beijing and an Engineer at Keppel Engineering (Suzhou).