Honored in 2005 by Inc. Magazine as “The Entrepreneur of the Year”, Ping Fu describes herself as an artist and a scientist whose chosen expression is business. In 1997, Ping co-founded Geomagic, a software company which pioneers 3D technologies that fundamentally change the way products are designed and manufactured around the world. Used for repairing vintage cars at Jay Leno’s garage to digitally recreating the Statue of Liberty, Geomagic aims to enable design and production of one-of-the-kind products and services at a cost less than mass production.
Before co-founding Geomagic, Ping Fu was Director of Visualization at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where she initiated and managed the NCSA Mosaic software project that led to Netscape and Internet Explorer. She has more than 30 years of software industry experience in database, networking, geometry processing, and computer graphics.
Since 2010, Ping has been serving on the NACIE (National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship) board at the White House, is a member of NCWIT (National Council on Women in Technology) and on the board of directors at the Long Now Foundation. Ping was recognized in 2012 by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as an Outstanding American By Choice.
She is actively involved in promoting entrepreneurship and women in mathematics and sciences: Ping is on the Advisory Board of the National Science Foundation, the Board of Trustees of the Kenan Institute at the University of North Carolina and on the Board of the Long Now Foundation. She is also a mentor for The Clinton Foundation’s Entrepreneur Mentoring Program, she participated in the kick-off for the White House’s 2011 Startup America initiative, is the author of two books in Chinese and inventor of five US and international patents.