Ping Fu’s digital shape sampling and processing company, Geomagic, has been touted as having the “pow and wow” factor – the potential to knock out the old way of doing things and replace it with something completely different. L. Brian Stauffer Photo

By Deb Aronson

In the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism, followers strive to bring harmony to the universe through the balance of opposites.

So too has Ping Fu, MS ’90 ENG, carefully negotiated a balancing act in the course of her life. Moving from the violence of China’s Cultural Revolution to the positivity of America’s entrepreneurial climate, Fu has counteracted despair with hope, chaos with order, and survival mode with serenity.

A comparative literature major who created and heads Geomagic Inc., a $30 million software company, Fu continues to strive for that harmony today, even in the sometimes cutthroat world of high tech business. According to the 49-year-old entrepreneur, the “essence of what you do … is to make life better.”

Hope for a better life may have seemed elusive in Fu’s childhood during China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. Ripped from her home in Nanjing, China, at the age of 7, Fu and her sister, Hong, 3, were sent to live in a dormitory for children of “capitalist-road” parents. Fu spent her entire childhood there – 11 years – until she was released at age 18. Eventually, she made her way to the United States as a young adult and now lives in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Today, through a combination of perseverance, resilience and a bit of luck, Fu has led Geomagic to become a leader in the field of digital shape sampling and processing (DSSP). The technology, which uses optical beams to digitally capture a physical object and automatically create a three-dimensional model, can be applied to manufacturing, testing and inspection processes. The technique is so precise and efficient that NASA used it to replicate damaged space shuttle tiles on Earth while the shuttle was still in orbit. Among other honors, the company earned Fu recognition as Inc. magazine’s 2005 “Entrepre-neur of the Year.”

One of a kind
According to Fu, Geomagic, which is located in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, is the only company of its kind in the United States.

“We could see right off Geomagic’s applicability,” said Paul Magelli, whom Fu approached for guidance early in her efforts to form the business.

The senior director of both the Academy for Entrepre-neurial Leadership and Illinois Business Consulting at the University of Illinois College of Business, Magelli said, “There was never any question that Geomagic was a strong technology; it was just waiting for its time.”

Before Geomagic, the skills required to create a smooth image from the shape sampling took a fleet of engineers and designers working laboriously for weeks to digitally process an object. The method was too time-consuming and expensive to work. With Geomagic’s magic, that step now takes place with the click of a button.

The technology has already transformed business. American firms use DSSP to perform full digital inspection for new parts. A preservation team has utilized the software to record the Statue of Liberty, so that it could be reconstructed, if necessary. Toyota uses the software to design cars and inspect parts.

The software can benefit an individual from head to toe – from better-fitting dental bridgework to hearing aids to high-tech prosthetics. Fu imagines consumers will soon be able to send a DSSP model

of their feet to a manufacturer to order new shoes.

Steak and sizzle
But Geomagic is about more than technology for Fu, who speaks of her company’s goals not in terms that are measurable but in ideas that are far less tangible.

“Our goal was not to go public or make a billion dollars – what does that mean?” she asked. “To set a goal for your company like ‘We have to make $10 million this year, $15 million next year’ is the same as telling your children, ‘You have to get an A on everything.’ It doesn’t mean anything.”

The “essence” of what we do, she said, should “create a true value.”

Fu’s vision for her company – its essence – is to change the very nature of production. She believes that businesses are cutting manufacturing costs to the bone instead of taking a knife to far meatier portions, such as inventory and enormous advertising campaigns.

“Why do you need to spend $30 million on advertisement for a shoe?” Fu posed. “What did [the marketing] do, make [the footwear] more comfortable?

“So,” she went on, “spend the $10 to manufacture the shoe in the U.S., instead of the $2 it takes in China, and spend less money on advertisement, inventory and building those bigger and bigger stores where I go in, and I can’t find a pair of shoes that fits me.”

Fu wants Geomagic to bring manufacturing back to the United States and stop the model of cutting costs in all the wrong places.

“If manufacturing is the steak and advertising is the sizzle – you lose the steak, you don’t have the sizzle,” said Fu. “Our technology will help build better products closer to where the customers are, so businesses don’t have to spend a lot on advertisement or shipping or the wrong model.”

From China to Champaign
It’s a long way from China to the United States, and Fu’s path was particularly tortured, both figuratively and literally. As a child, she was forced to watch the Red Guard kill or torture people, including her little sister, who was scalded for making too much noise while playing. In another instance, when the Red Guard threw Hong into a river just to watch her drown, Fu jumped in to save her. For that action, Fu was raped, and both girls were beaten.

In 1976, Chairman Mao Zedong died, the Cultural Revolution ended, and Fu was released. While enrolled at university, a professor suggested Fu study the rumors of female infanticide in the Chinese countryside. In 1980, the professor received Fu’s findings, which were then published in Shanghai’s largest newspaper.

At first, the report was widely praised (though Fu was not given credit). In a turnabout, she suddenly became well-known when she was blamed after the story received negative international attention. As Fu was taken into custody, she felt certain she would be executed.

Instead, Fu’s luck began to change. Inexplicably, she was bundled on a plane and sent to the University of New Mexico, where she studied comparative literature. Fu then changed majors and moved to the University of California, San Diego, to complete her undergraduate degree in computer science.

“No matter what negativity or tragedy happens around me, I have to grab for the beacon of light,” Fu said. “Otherwise, I would never have survived.”

A chance meeting on the beach led to a part-time job for her at a startup software design company. Despite being offered a stake in the firm, which would have made her a millionaire, she instead headed to Bell Labs in the Naperville-Lisle area in Illinois.

“Even in China, we knew that Bell Labs was the place to work, that it was synonymous with innovation,” Fu said of her decision. While there, she had the opportunity through a special program to earn a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Illinois.

That’s how Fu met Herbert Edelsbrunner, a UI computer science professor. Her relationship with Edelsbrunner drew Fu downstate, where she began working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications on the Urbana campus. They married in 1991.

“I like Herbert’s mind,” said Fu. “He is an incredibly intelligent person and so intuitive and down-to-earth.”

Fu loved her job at NCSA, too, which, at the time, was the center for computer graphics and visualization. Among other things, her eight-person group did ground-breaking work on the movie “Terminator 2” and early work with the simulation of tornadoes. Fu started the team that developed Mosaic, the first graphical browser that led to Netscape and made Marc Andreessen ’94 ENG a household name.

“NCSA was such an incredible group of people who were excited about doing new things. It was a dream job,” she said.

‘Being so close to failure gave me confidence’
In 1996, while still at NCSA, Fu founded Geomagic. The going was rough at first, with Fu trying to attract needed talent to central Illinois. Eventually, Fu and her husband left Illinois in 1999 for North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

Ping Fu, right, and her sister, Hong, shown here in 1969, grew up amid the terrors of a Red Guard-run dormitory during China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s. In 2005, Fu was named Inc. magazine’s “Entrepreneur of the Year.” Photo courtesy of Ping Fu

Even worse than personnel matters, though, was the slow signup of potential customers skeptical of the new technology. Fu ran through her first $8.5 million without making a sale, but she didn’t lose faith. She hunkered down, laid off her sales staff and mortgaged her house to pay their severance. Fu asked her remaining employees to give her three months to turn the company around, which she did. Within a year, the company was showing a profit and now employs several hundred people in three countries.

“Being so close to failure somehow gave me confidence,” Fu told Inc. magazine in 2005. “Everybody worked together; we reinforced each other. The crisis committed me to running the company.”

Along the way, Fu developed her own style of command, which sounds quite similar to the way Benjamin Hoff describes Taoism in his best-selling book, “The Tao of Pooh.” “Taoism is happy, gentle, childlike and serene,” he wrote. “Its key principles are Natural Simplicity, Effortless Action, Spontaneity and Compassion.”

That simplicity and compassion are evident in Fu’s vision of her company’s future. “I don’t have an ultimate goal,” she said. “I want every day to be a good day. And I want tomorrow to be better than today. I want my employees to wake up in the morning and feel energized and want to come to work. And, if I have customers who love to do business with us, I have a business. This is how I see the company.”

One of those employees, Rob Black, has been an applications engineer at Geomagic since 1999.

“Ping doesn’t overwhelm you with her personality,” he said.

“It [wasn’t] apparent at first how different she was. Soon, though, I began to realize how approachable she is. She would just come around and chat with us.

“She’s a very strong person and perfectly capable of making important decisions, but she also does a great job of listening to us. Our input is very much

valued.”

Fu often tells people that being a leader is not that different from being a mother. “The key is when you wake up in the morning and your best interest is someone else rather than yourself – your perspective changes,” she said.

Fu’s own perspective has been formed by XiXi (pronounced “shi-shi”), her 13-year-old daughter with Edelsbrunner.

“I’m much more interested in her curiosity and learning ability,” Fu said of her daughter. “I want her to want to learn. That’s what I’m proud of. We are not focusing on her grades.

“To me, so long as the person has motivation and knows what they want to do, they can do wonderful things,” Fu said. “But their motivation cannot be to please their parents or to please their teacher or their boss. Their motivation has to be what they want. And that makes a world of difference. I see so many children who go to an elite school because they are pleasing their parents. Their parents will be so proud if they go to MIT or Harvard. If they do, they get a car.”

Fu laughed at the very thought. “I would never do that for my daughter,” she said.

While Fu’s outlook on child-rearing differs from some, her gruesome childhood experiences and incredible resiliency have also given her a different perspective from most entrepreneurs.

“I had to have this mind set,” she said of her resistance to fear. “I had to believe, ‘I can be somebody someday.’

“No matter what negativity or tragedy happens around me, I have to grab for the beacon of light,” Fu said. “Otherwise, I would never have survived.”

Aronson is a full-time, freelance writer who lives in Urbana with her husband and two children.