of the abduction. It was a life of pain and torture, sustained only by a strong will and an imagination that could conjure up beauty in the darkest of circumstances.
After Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, Fu began her first formal education at age 18. She earned a literature degree and pursued further studies in journalism. Unfortunately, her inquisitive mind was not welcomed in her native country: Her reporting about the killing of baby girls in China was published in a leading Shanghai newspaper, leading to international outrage, imprisonment, and deportation.
PiNg Fu, ChairMaN and CEO of Geomagic, envisions a future populated by small- and medium-sized compa- nies empowered by digital design and distribution—where even a two-person company or an individual in a remote location can share their innovations with the rest of the world.
Geomagic (see http://www.geomag-ic.com) is a leading company in the industry category called digital shape sampling and processing (DSSP). DSSP describes technologies that close the loop between physical products and their digital representations. It is fundamentally changing the way products are made, driving a shift from mass manufacturing to mass customization.
In selecting her as Entrepreneur of the Year in 2005, Inc. magazine praised Fu as a “visionary” and said “she’s leading a modern industrial revolution that will make customization cheap and outsourcing obsolete, and forever change the way things get made—from turbines to artificial hearts.”
Vision by necessity Growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution, vision for Fu was not merely an asset, but a tool for survival. She was born in Nanjing, but raised by an aunt and uncle in a suburb of Shanghai. Her life changed dramatically at age seven, when she was taken away from her home and family by Red Guards. She spent more than a decade in captivity with her sister, who was three years old at the time
Fu came to the U.S. in 1981, enroll-ing at the University of New Mexico to study comparative literature. A year later, her life took a turn when she decided to pursue a computer science degree at the University of California-San Diego. After graduation, she worked in a series of jobs with increasing responsibilities. Although shy in demeanor, a restless intellect kept her thinking of new ways to apply technology.
While at Bell Labs, she led the development of data mining and ISDN digital switch software, the technology components that make digital telephony possible. As Director of Visualiza-
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