Board of Directors

Our Board of Directors has decades of combined experience in high-tech industries and an impressive record of business successes. Together they are helping Geomagic shape the future of the 3D industry and transform how companies design and manufacture their products.

Herbert Edelsbrunner

Herbert Edelsbrunner is a co-founder of Geomagic and a member of the Board of Directors. He is a pioneer and world-leading expert in the fields of algorithms, computational geometry, and combinatorial topology. Dr. Edelsbrunner is the only computer scientist to have been awarded the prestigious Waterman Award (1991) from the National Science Foundation. He is responsible for the mathematical theory behind Alpha Shapes™, Geomagic Shape and Geomagic Wrap, which are the unique theoretical underpinnings of the company's products, and he continues to advance research in related areas. He has been awarded numerous government and industrial grants to fund further development of his work. Dr. Edelsbrunner has published more than 100 research papers in refereed journals or conference proceedings and authored two books. Dr Edelsbrunner is an Art and Science Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics at Duke University. He holds MS and PhD degrees in technical mathematics from the Technical University of Graz, Austria.

Stuart M. Frantz

Stuart M. Frantz, who joined the Geomagic Board of Directors in June of 1999, brings a great deal of financial management experience to the company. Mr. Frantz began his career with Irving Trust Company, a commercial bank in New York, New York, where he served as an officer in the Worldwide Corporations Group. After earning his MBA from The Darden School at the University of Virginia in 1984, he held upper-level management positions in the investment banking groups of Carolina Securities Corporation and Wheat First Securities. Mr. Frantz founded the Carolinas Golf Group, LLC in 1990 and served as president and CEO until 1998. During his tenure, the company's holdings grew from one property in 1990 to seven courses in 1998, when the company was sold to Cobblestone Golf Group. Mr. Frantz earned a BS in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also is active in the Boys & Girls Clubs of North Carolina. Mr. Frantz's present position is head of private equity investing for Franklin Street Partners.

Ping Fu

Ping Fu is Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Geomagic. She co-founded Geomagic and has led its growth from a start-up to be the worldwide leader in digital shape sampling and processing (DSSP) industry. Geomagic has attracted more than $8 million in capital from private and institutional investors, and won millions of dollars in research innovation grants from NSF and NIST. The company has been profitable since 2002, and increased its revenue by 2,105 percent during the last five years.

Before starting Geomagic, Ms. 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 20 years of software industry experience in database, networking, geometry processing, and computer graphics. Ms. Fu is a respected thought leader and frequent keynote speaker at international conferences.

Ms. Fu has received numerous awards for her management achievements, including the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the Carolinas, worldwide "Fast 50" executive by Fast Company magazine, Entrebizneur of the Year by Business Leader magazine, and business woman of the year by Triangle Business Journal. Most recently, she was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. magazine, the leading publication for American entrepreneurs. She holds graduate and post-graduate degrees in computer science and Chinese literature, and is an adjunct professor at Duke University.

Learn more about Ping Fu in Business Leader and Inc. magazine.

Peter S. Fuss

As a member of the Board of Directors, Mr. Fuss is a great source of technical knowledge and international business experience for Geomagic. Prior to his retirement in 1993, Fuss was president of Tellabs International, Inc., which he founded in 1987 as a subsidiary of Tellabs, Inc. Tellabs International is responsible for all Tellabs operations outside of North America with sales, R&D, or manufacturing facilities in 24 cities throughout the world. Before joining Tellabs in 1979, Mr. Fuss was director of research and development for Teletype Corporation and was with Bell Laboratories for 19 years. He received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1956 from the University of Michigan and a master's degree in 1960 from New York University. He also served two years as an officer in the United States Air Force. Mr. Fuss currently is a management consultant and executive vice president-technology for Batterson Venture Partners, LLC. He is a member of the Board of Directors of six technology companies. He holds 10 patents, primarily in the area of digital signal processing.

Paul Rizzo

Paul Rizzo, who is a former dean of the Kenan Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, recently retired from his position as vice chairman of the board of IBM Corporation. He currently serves on the boards of directors of several corporations, including Johnson & Johnson, Ryder Systems, and Cox Enterprises, Inc., which are listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and NASDAQ-listed Pharmaceutical Product Development, Inc. and Kenan Transport Company. Mr. Rizzo was one of the founding stockholders of Franklin Street Partners. He holds a BS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.