“Right from the very beginning, I’ve always said that when I could afford it, I would pay back— in some way—the scholarship that allowed me to attend Cornell,” said Arthur Chuen Hon Cheng ’73, who graduated from Cornell with a B.S. in engineering physics with distinction.
In 2017, Cheng accomplished his goal and created the Ng Yin Ying scholarship, named after his mother who had recently passed away. But he didn’t stop there. In 2021, he established a current-use director’s discretionary fund for the School of Applied and Engineering Physics to support equipment needs, graduate student or post-doctoral research expenses, and/or travel expenses for meetings.
Now retired, Cheng, who received his Sc.D. from MIT, spent part of his career studying the physics of rocks, quantitative reservoir characterization, geomechanics, and urban and near-surface geophysics as the principal research scientist at the MIT Earth Resources Laboratory in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, and as a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at the National University of Singapore. He also spent many years working in for Western Atlas, Baker Hughes, and Halliburton, where his engineering physics degree was invaluable by allowing him to apply physics theory he had learned at Cornell. In September 2023, he was named president of The Society of Exploration Geophysicists, and he also continues to do some research with a colleague from National University of Singapore, and is an adjunct professor The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Cheng became interested in geophysics during his final years at Cornell when Applied and Engineering Physics professor Art Kuckes switched from working in fusion into geophysics. “I’ve always been interested in the earth,” Cheng said. “I worked with Professor Kuckes during my senior year, building one of the third prototype induction loops in Ithaca. I remember it was extremely cold, working in Ithaca over Christmas vacation. And that’s where it really started, moving to geophysics. I found that Cornell was a perfect place to study. There aren’t as many distractions. There are enough things to do, but not too many. You can focus on studying.”
As a retired professor, Cheng is well aware that unrestricted funds are valuable to department heads because they allow leeway to use the money in ways that would be most valuable to the department. So, he decided to make a gift that would allow the School of Applied and Engineering Physics to support graduate student and post-doc research and travel, and purchase new equipment for its student lab courses, AEP1100 (Lasers and Photonics) and AEP1200 (Introduction to Nanoscience and Nanotechnology).
“This gift has allowed us to significantly update, upgrade, or replace a lot of equipment in our teaching lab courses, providing our students with the tools and resources they need to succeed,” said Rebecca Tucker, the school’s administrative director.
As an example, Tucker cited the purchase of a 500 MHz Series 3 Tektronix oscilloscope, which has allowed students to accurately investigate the characteristics of the output pulses of the nitrogen lasers they build in class. The NanoSurf Naio atomic force microscopes are advanced, high-end microscopes for instruction labs, and they replaced one that was more than a decade old.
“The new equipment raises the quality of our labs,” said Jon Velazquez, lab manager. “We are focused on improving the lab experience for the students by upgrading equipment, even to the research-grade level when possible. Our new oscilloscope is a good example of this.”
The teaching lab wing is built on the same foundational slab as the Clark Atrium, so there is a lot of vibration, making the microscopes difficult to use without vibration dampening.
“The vibration isolation tables are essential for using the new microscopes,” Velazquez explained. “Without the vibration isolation tables, we would not be able to see the carbon nanotubes with our new Naio atomic force microscopes, or see atoms as clearly with our scanning tunneling microscope.” Other important purchases were a spin coater, which is used to coat silicon substrates with photoresist that is later exposed as part of the process to fabricate micro-structures, and the Optotech Lab Demo and Nanofab Atlas, which is an optomechanical device to show intricate diffraction and interference patterns with a laser pointer.
“The new lab equipment enables us to push the experiment closer to the theory we are studying,” said Mathis Vigneau, a student in AEP1100. “It also prepares us for future lab work by giving us a chance to learn how to use different types of state-of-the-art equipment.”
Chris Xu, director of Applied and Engineering Physics who has been teaching AEP1100 for the last 10 years, said, “The lab is the heart and soul of our Intro to Engineering courses such as AEP1100, and our students love the hands-on experience. Abstract concepts become more intuitive when one can see, touch, and even build something based on what you learned in the lab. Our students are thrilled with the updated equipment, and Arthur’s support has clearly made a difference in their educational journey. We are grateful to Dr. Cheng for his generosity and support of future researchers.”