Ping Fu

Ping Fu (born 1958) is a Chinese-American entrepreneur. She is the co-founder of 3D software development company Geomagic, and was its chief executive officer until February 2013 when the company was acquired by 3D Systems Inc. , she is the Vice President and Chief Entrepreneur Officer at 3D Systems. Fu grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution and moved to the United States in 1984. She co-founded Geomagic in 1997 with her then-husband Herbert Edelsbrunner, and has been recognized for her achievements with the company through a number of awards, including being named Inc. magazine's 2005 "Entrepreneur of the Year". In 2013, she published her memoir, Bend, Not Break, co-authored with MeiMei Fox.

Early life and education Ping Fu was born in 1958 in Nanjing, China, where her father was a professor at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA). Fu spent her childhood and early adulthood in China. She grew up during the Cultural Revolution, during which she was separated from both her parents for several years. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, she attended the college that later became the Suzhou University studying Chinese literature. Fu has related in interviews and in her memoir that she chose to research China's one-child policy for her thesis and traveled to the countryside, where she found that infanticide of female infants was common, as was abortion, even late into pregnancy. Fu said that, after turning in her research, she believes it was passed to a newspaper editor who wrote an editorial on the infanticide of female children. After this event, she left school, without graduating.

Fu left China and arrived in the United States in January 1984. but later moved to San Diego to study computer science as an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego. Following her graduation from UC San Diego with a bachelor's degree in computer science, she moved to Illinois, where she took a job with Bell Labs.

Career

National Center for Supercomputing Applications In the early 1990s, Fu began working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at UIUC. In 1994 Ping took a temporary position at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, returning to NCSA in 1995.

Geomagic In 1996, Marc Andreessen's success with his own company, Netscape, inspired UIUC to encourage entrepreneurship and Fu developed the idea for a company that would combine manufacturing and digital technology, including 3D modeling software, the concept of which she called the "Personal Factory". She founded Geomagic with her then-husband, Herbert Edelsbrunner, whose research formed the basis for the initial software to be developed by the company. In 1997, she left the NCSA to begin operations at Geomagic, taking on the role of CEO. After she and Edelsbrunner divorced, he continued to serve as an advisor at Geomagic.

Other roles In addition to leading Geomagic, Fu has held a number of advisory roles relating to technology and entrepreneurship and with charitable organizations. She has served on the U.S. National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship since 2010 and is also a member of the National Council on Women in Technology. In 2012, she was appointed to the board of the Long Now Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on long-term thinking and enduring technology. She also serves on the board of the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina, the board of Live Nation Entertainment and is an advisor at Modern Meadow, an organization focused on tissue engineering. Since 2017, Ping has served on the Board of Directors of the Burning Man Project; she first attended Burning Man in 2010, and she gave Burning Man a donation to support the purchase of Fly Ranch.

Memoir

On December 31, 2012, Fu published a memoir, Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds. Co-authored with MeiMei Fox, the book told the stories of her life, from her early childhood in China to her experiences as an entrepreneur, including founding and leading Geomagic. The book received positive reviews from outlets including The Wall Street Journal on Forbes China, Forbes published an interview with Fu that discussed Fu's memoir and her early life, which contained an inaccurate interpretation of where Ping Fu lived during the cultural revolution. Chinese netizens responded to the piece with criticisms regarding alleged fabrication of events and inconsistencies in media coverage of Fu, which raised questions in the media about the veracity of details included in the memoir. Chinese blogger Fang Zhouzi was among the critics and he later raised further questions and criticisms based on earlier media coverage of Fu. to conclude that Ping was the subject of an online attack.

Fu responded to the criticisms through a public statement, and a post on the Huffington Post website answering questions that were raised about her childhood, education and being forced to leave China. In response to questions about accuracy of details in the book, her publisher stated that the book is a memoir, rather than a journalistic account of the Cultural Revolution. and she received the 2010 "Leadership Award" from the CAD Society. The next year, she was given a "Lifetime Achievement" award by the Triangle Business Journal. and in 2012, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services named Fu as an "Outstanding American by Choice".