University of Illinois has no Record of Fu Ping's Director Position or Mosaic Involvement

In responding to an FOIA request, University of Illinois recently disclosed that they have no records that Fu Ping was ever a Director of Visualization at NCSA and that she initiated the Mosaic browser development. The former was included in the school's own award citation on Fu Ping. The latter was, of course, well known because of Fu Ping's numerous interviews on the subject.

Previously, the school has released employment records of Fu Ping at NCSA, which showed that she was only a programmer there when Mosaic was developed and a manager later.

From: University of Illinois FOIA Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2013 3:01 PM
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: University of Illinois FOIA Subject: FOIA Response (13-357)
 August 7, 2013 [REDACTED] Re: FOIA 13-357  Dear Mr. xxxx: I am responding to your letter received in our office on July 31 under the Freedom of Information Act in which you request: "a copy of the following records (documentation in published, unpublished, machine-readable, and audiovisual forms, including correspondence such as printed letters as well as emails): 1.     Records, if any, that Ping Fu was a Director of Visualization of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications;2.     Records, if any, that Ping Fu initiated the NCSA Mosaic software project;3.     Records, if any, that Ping Fu managed the MCSA Mosaic software project;
4.     Records, if any, that Ping Fu’s work product led to Netscape; and5.     Records, if any, that Ping Fu’s work product led to Internet Explorer. The records, if any, responsive to this FOIA request should be located in Ping Fu’s research and project files at NCSA. These include research and project proposals, funding applications, financial and budget records, research data, reports, and correspondence."
 A search was conducted and no records pertaining to your request could be located.  You have a right, under the law, to seek a review of this response by the Public Access Counselor (PAC) in the Office of the Attorney General. The PAC may be reached by phone at 217-782-1396, by email to publicaccess@atg.state.il.us, or by postal mail at the Public Access Bureau, 500 S. 2nd Street, Springfield, Illinois 62706. You also have the right to seek judicial review under section 11 of this Act.  If you have questions for our office, please contact 217-333-6400. Sincerely,   Thomas P. HardyExecutive Director
and Chief Records Officer   cc:  filelegal counsel  

Document: University of Illinois' 2012 Award for Fu Ping

Fu Ping was a recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Department of Computer Science of University of Illinois in 2012. The biographic sketch on her included the following paragraph on their award web site:

Before starting Geomagic in 1997, Fu was the director of visualization at NCSA, the University of Illinois supercomputing center, where she supervised work on Mosaic, the world’s first practical web browser. Her team also developed new geometry algorithms that enabled the morphing special effects for the robot villain in the movie Terminator 2.

Upon a recent inquiry, however, the school indicated that they could not find any records pertaining Fu Ping being a director at NCSA or her involvement in the Mosaic project.

Previously, the school has released employment records of Fu Ping at NCSA, which showed that she was only a programmer there when Mosaic was developed and a manager later.

Document: Fu Ping's Resume for her NSF Grant Application (1997 version)

NSF has located more versions of Fu Ping's resume in her application file. Besides the one submitted in early 1990s, below is a version used around 1997, when she was CEO & President of Raindrop Geomagic. This version no longer lists a Lecturer position as work experience or a translated children's book as publication, but still lists a BA from Suzhou University as her educational credential.

She also included a new "Senior Consultant" position at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for the academic year of 1995-1996.

For her work at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, she described it as "initiated and helped to design NCSA Mosaic internet browser software."

Document: Fu Ping's Position in NCSA

Upon a Freedom of Information Act request, University of Illinois has released the official Notice of Appointment documents regarding to Fu Ping's past employment at the National Center of Supercomputing Applications. The documents show that Fu Ping was initially hired as a Visiting Res Programmer in 1991. Her title changed to Res Programmer in 1994 and then to Technical Program Manager in 1996.

Therefore, during the 1991-1992 time frame when Mosaic browser was invented in NCSA, it was unlikely Fu Ping could have been in a leadership position in that historical event.

Document: Fu Ping's Resume at University of Illinois

Responding to an Freedom of Information Act request, University of Illinois has released a copy of resume Fu Ping submitted when she applied for a job at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications job in 1991.

This version of her resume predated the one that she submitted for her NSF grant application. The content is similar however. Besides missing some of the latter events, this version also claimed that she had a BA degree from Suzhou University, which has been proven to be false. She did not list her translated children's story book as publication in this one, but listed "Teaching Assistant" and "Research Assistant" at University of New Mexico and University of San Diego (should be UCSD instead, which she did attend) as past experiences.

While it is common for graduate students to work as TA and/or RA during their studies, Fu Ping was actually an undergraduate student in both UNM and UCSD. It would be highly unusual for her to have such work experiences in those schools.

UPDATE (7/30/2013): UNM has officially refuted Fu Ping's TA claim.
UPDATE (8/4/2012): UCSD could not confirm or deny Fu Ping's TA claim.

Questionable Fact: Fu Ping's Position in NCSA and Mosaic Project

The Original Story:
One of the intriguing highlights in Fu Ping's story was her proclaimed role in the development of Mosaic browser, which eventually became part of the foundation of the modern Internet in the forms of Netscape, Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc. In Bend, Not Break, she recalls on Pages 103-104:

In 1992, I received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and was able to hire a few students to work with me at NCSA. One of them was Marc Andreessen, a witty, upbeat, and extremely bright undergraduate who had done some user interface programming in Austin, Texas, as a summer intern at IBM. We talked about building a browser, which is a graphic user interface to manage our public domain Web site at NCSA.

The Later Story:
In her speech at UNC in 2010, Fu Ping elaborated a little further on her position in that project:

We had a 40 million dollars annual budget and I was managing 10 million dollars in industrial relationship and 30 million federal government. So, we could actually do anything we wanted. I just happened to hire this student his name is Marc Andreessen.

The Debunking:
On Page 178 of Bend, Not Break, Fu Ping was reflecting on her reluctance of taking leadership in the earlier years of Geomagic years after NCSA:

At some point during the early daylight hours, I had an epiphany: I had given the leadership of Geomagic away because I had been scared of taking responsibility for the $6.5 million we had raised. On the surface, I had been proud of myself for putting my ego aside to step down as CEO, but what really had been guiding me was fear.

You wouldn't expect someone who had previously managed tens of million dollars sweat so much for $6.5 million.


The invention of the Mosaic browser is something of technological legend and has been well documented in a variety of forms. Fu Ping's contribution or even her name has never been mentioned in all but very few historical records -- with those few only traced back to her own words.

When she joined NCSA, Fu Ping had barely graduated with an MS degree from UIUC. It would be hard to imagine that she was in a leadership position managing millions of federal funding. Indeed, Cindy Hao, who investigated this matter, provides the following information:

According to NCSA's public affairs coordinator, Ping Fu joined the center in April 1991. Her job classification was "visiting research programmer" until she took a leave for Hong Kong in 1994.  

A "research programmer" who provides a mentoring role to undergraduate students on the project sounds a lot more reasonable given her credential and experiences at that point.

UPDATE (7/20/2013): Fu Ping's Visiting Res Programer position at NCSA has now been officially confirmed by University of Illinois.