![]() ![]() The company was concerned about giving away proprietary information. is a high-tech company, it is difficult to get approval even to present at conferences in the United States,” he says. would deny permission to give the talk if he asked, which he was supposed to do. There was one problem, though: Hua knew that G.E. Hua arranged to arrive in May, so he could attend a nephew’s wedding and his college reunion at Harbin Institute of Technology. Beyond the prestige, the invitation also provided a free trip to China to see his friends and family. Being recognized back home was especially fulfilling for Hua, who grew up poor in a small village and was the only child there from his generation to go to college. “I felt honored to be invited to give a talk,” Hua says. ![]() The use of carbon-based composites in fan blades and their casings, instead of metal, means lighter engines and a commercial advantage. Aviation, he was part of a group that designed containment cases for the rotating fan blades of jet engines. But because his studies were focused more on practical applications than pure research, a career in industry made more sense than one in academia. “When I did my Ph.D., I initially wanted to be a professor in China or in the United States,” he says. Hua had always desired academic recognition. Days later, Chen sent him an email inviting him to N.U.A.A. “I didn’t even think much about it before accepting,” Hua told me. Like most people who use LinkedIn, Hua was accustomed to connecting with professionals on the site whom he didn’t know personally, so the request did not strike him as unusual. The LinkedIn request came from Chen Feng, a school official at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (N.U.A.A.), in eastern China. in 2007, he went to work for G.E., first at the company’s research facility in Niskayuna, N.Y., for a few years, then at G.E. He moved to the United States from China in 2003 for graduate studies in structural engineering. Hua is in his 40s, tall and athletic, with a boyish face that makes him look a decade younger. Aviation in Cincinnati whom I will refer to using part of his Chinese given name - Hua - received a request on LinkedIn. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. ![]()
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