The guest list for the First Lady's box also includes Ping Fu, co-founder of the technology company Geomagic. Here are the official bios for Li Boynton and Ping Fu, according to the guest list provided by the White House Press Secretary:
Li Boynton (Bellaire, TX)By the way, our friend Jeff Yang will be liveblogging tonight's State of the Union Address for Asian Pacific Americans for Progress, starting at 8:45pm ET. You can follow along with his observations as Obama (hopefully) covers the key issues. For more information, go to the Asian Pacific Americans for Progress blog here.
Li is a 18-year-old senior from Bellaire, Texas whose passion for science and global health has led her to new and potentially ground-breaking methods for testing the quality of drinking water. Almost one billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and 3.5 million people die each year from water-related diseases. Observing the limitations and significant expense of conventional chemical-specific tests, Boynton saw a need for a broader, more efficient assay for testing – and developed a bacteria bio-sensor. Li’s work, which has the potential to be significant in improving public health worldwide, received the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair award for 2009.
Ping Fu (Chapel Hill, NC)
Ping Fu co-founded Geomagic, a company which pioneers technologies that fundamentally change the way products are designed, engineered and manufactured around the world from automobiles to medical devices. Geomagic, under her leadership, has been an active participant in the SBA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Fu has led Geomagic to deliver broad-based economic impact to the US economy with tangible results – the company tripled its customer base and employment while achieving high growth and profitability. As such, the NSF awarded Geomagic the prestigious Tibbetts Award for exemplifying the very best in SBIR.
Fu has more than 25 years of software industry experience in database, internet technology, and visual computing. Before Geomagic, she was the Director of Visualization at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and is also, actively involved in promoting entrepreneurship and women in mathematics and sciences.