Ying Wu, NJIT graduate and founder of a highly successful telecommunications firm, has donated $1.5 million to be used for an endowed fund that will provide fellowships for graduate students in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.  Born in China, Wu came to America in the late 1980s with just $27 because China limited the amount of money he could take out of the country.  Wu managed to make his way from San Francisco to the east coast, where he worked at various menial jobs before enrolling in the master's degree program in electrical engineering at NJIT.  He completed his degree in 1988.

At a Newark College of Engineering awards banquet in 2000, Wu recalled how helpful NJIT professors were, spending time with him and offering him an invaluable teaching assistantship. And what he learned in the classroom, he said, put him on the path to success.

"The courses at NJIT," he said, "were very useful and relevant to my work in computers.  The professors focused on real problems, and I learned a great deal, especially through my work as a teach assistant.  You need to have the solid foundation of a good education to be successful in business.

After graduating from NJIT, Wu worked at the former AT&T Bell Labs (now Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies).  He later left Bell Labs and in 1991 co-founded Starcom Network Systems Inc., a New Jersey-based developer of intelligent network systems.  In 1995, he merged the company with Unitech Telecom, Inc., a California-based developer of digital and wireless transmission systems, and became the executive vice president and the vice chairman of the board of directors of the new UTStarcom, as well as the founder and CEO of it China-based subsidiary UTStarcom (China) Ltd.

UTStarcom has become one of China's major telecom equipment providers.  The firm is now expanding to other Asia Pacific markets such as Taiwan and Thailand.  Finance Asia magazine recently named UTStarcom one of Asia's top ten companies.  While the company's operations in the United States are devoted to high-level R&D and international marketing, Wu has focused his energies on developing and installing advanced wired and wireless products based on American technology.