Professor Yupo Chan came to MIT from his native Hong Kong and completed his bachelor’s in civil engineering, his master’s in transportation systems, and his PhD in operations research at the Institute. Throughout his successful career in operations research and communications—a fast-growing branch of systems engineering—he remained grateful for the education, friendships, and fond memories he gained at MIT. During his lifetime, he established two gift annuities to support undergraduate scholarships.

“Yupo valued the education that he got at MIT,” says his spouse, Susan Chan, “and wanted to make that available to other people, too.” 

Although Yupo passed away in February of 2020, he continues to shape MIT both through gifts made during his lifetime and an innovative new fund established by Susan in his honor in the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing to celebrate Yupo’s memory and support the mentorship and interdisciplinary collaboration he championed. 

“Yupo valued the education that he got at MIT, and wanted to make that available to other people, too.”

 

The Chan Wui and Yunyin Retreat Fund—named in honor of Yupo’s parents, who prized education—will underwrite an annual retreat for select MIT researchers, enabling participants to step away from their daily activities for in-depth discussions and dialogue and cultivating mentoring relationships between early career and senior researchers. Research topics will be diverse and include those that Yupo advanced in his work. 

An “entrepreneurial academic” who valued mentorship.

Susan describes her husband as “an entrepreneurial academic” who found joy in research and teaching as well as in music, cuisine, and travel. As a scholar and author, he explored the intersection of mobility and communications and the technological advances reshaping everything from travel and commerce to education and employment. For many years he served as professor and founding chair of systems engineering at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. It was there that he created one of his proudest achievements—the Chan Wui and Yunyin Rising Star Workshop, similarly named for his mother and father. 

The Rising Star Workshop was created to offer early career and senior academics in his field a chance to form mentoring relationships and explore common interests in beautiful geographic settings. Like the new retreat fund at MIT, the University of Arkansas Rising Star Workshop was funded through the Chans’ charitable trust, which was the result of a generous inheritance from Yupo’s mother and father. 

Celebrating one life by empowering others.

The goal of the Chan Wui and Yunyin Retreat Fund is to extend Yupo Chan’s generous and entrepreneurial spirit and empower MIT researchers to address complex global challenges. “This is a gift coming from Yupo, through me,” says Susan. “The fact that these retreats will be designed by and held at MIT, an institution that Yupo valued so much, made this the right gift.”