For the Greater Good
Alumni Sai-Wai and Beatrice Fu are helping build better undergraduate physics teaching labs that will benefit students for decades to come.
Sai-Wai Fu (BS '79, MS '80) and Beatrice Fu (BS '80) first met as undergraduates at Caltech in the late 1970s. They married shortly after graduation and soon found themselves both employed at Intel, working on some of the microprocessors and semiconductors that made the company famous.
They raised two sons and had illustrious careers, but never lost touch with the Institute. The Fus are longtime members of the Caltech Alumni Association and the Associates, and both sit on the Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA) Chair's Council, which is a group of individuals who provide philanthropic support and guidance to the division. As generous supporters of the Institute, their giving has focused on student support. Their $95,000 gift builds on a previous donation to enhance the undergraduate physics teaching labs, a hallmark of a Caltech education.
"The fundamental training in the sciences that I received at Caltech, especially in physics, gave me the confidence to learn new things later in life," says Beatrice, who earned a bachelor's degree in engineering. "I worked my entire career in the semiconductor industry and had to learn a lot on the job. But the fact that I have that basic science training from Caltech helped me to maneuver through and not be afraid to enter a new field."
Science in Action
According to Kenneth Libbrecht (BS '80), professor of physics, there are three undergraduate physics labs that provide the training Beatrice says helped her succeed. The first is an Introductory Lab that currently serves roughly half of all Caltech students. It gives students exposure to handling equipment, collecting data, and understanding measurement uncertainties.
"The Physics Lab is the next step in the series, and that is where students do some very cool experiments in more modern physics, like atomic spectroscopy, electron diffraction, and gamma-ray physics," says Libbrecht, who has been involved with the labs for more than two decades. "This course is designed to give sophomore physics students their first serious exposure to some complex topics in experimental physics."
The final step is the Advanced Lab, which provides senior physics students with hands-on experience working with many of the experimental tools and techniques found in contemporary research labs.
"That's where the Fu gift came in," Libbrecht says. "We had started this transformation of the Advanced Lab, but it needed a good push to really revamp it."
Sai-Wai and Beatrice Fu understand the importance of learning how to do an experiment and use various instruments, and they say those universal skills can apply to many careers.
"We feel it is a good investment for the school to update the physics labs," says Sai-Wai, who earned a bachelor's degree in applied physics and a master's degree in electrical engineering from Caltech. "Physics lays the foundation for most of the other sciences. What's more fundamental than electrons and photons, right?"
Cutting-Edge Experiments
While upgrades are planned for all the physics labs, transforming the Advanced Lab is Libbrecht's primary focus for the Fu investment.
"While some of our older experiments had a kind of historic value, our students want to see cutting-edge technology," he says. "So, it becomes necessary over time to keep up with changing technologies, to say, out with the old and in with the new."
With more contemporary hardware and software, students will receive a direct, firsthand opportunity to explore electronics and optics—two key areas of applied physics—in experiential ways that were not possible before.
"Electronics and optics training provides fundamental knowledge for a broad range of fields," Libbrecht says. "I think the students really appreciate and recognize that getting hands-on experience with things like high-speed lasers and state-of-the-art electronics test equipment is really going to serve them well."
A Focus on the Future
In addition to sitting on the PMA Chair's Council, Beatrice mentors computer science undergraduates on campus and via Zoom several times a year. The Fus have also been hosting annual gatherings at their home in the Bay Area for the past 15 years to get other alumni excited about physics, too.
"We are very grateful that Caltech has faculty members come up here to meet with the alumni and talk about the latest and greatest work in physics at our annual salons," Sai- Wai says.
The Fus hope that the updated physics labs will present exceptional learning opportunities for many years to come.
"To us, it just seemed like the natural thing to do, to support students in a way that benefits people now and in the future," Beatrice says.