More than 50 years later, Deborah Chung ’74 remains in touch with the Wellesley host family who welcomed her from Hong Kong. She remembers playing a Beethoven sonata on the piano in Stone Hall, but it was math and science that captivated her. She says Wellesley faculty positively influenced the kind of professor she became. During her academic career, Deborah estimates, she has ushered 40 graduate students through their Ph.D.s and has taught some 4,000 undergraduates.

A distinguished professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Deborah developed a building product called “smart concrete.” By incorporating carbon fiber into the concrete, she says, a structure can be monitored for degradation without putting sensors in the construction. “The concrete itself is the sensor,” she says.

The innovation combined Deborah’s expertise in electrical engineering and materials science. “The two married together allowed me to study concrete as if it’s an electronic material,” she says. The invention was revolutionary because it has the potential to prevent catastrophic failures.

For example, she points to crumbling infrastructure. “We have a lot of bridges, in particular, in this country that are structurally deficient,” she says. Smart concrete could alert inspectors to imminent problems, allowing for repairs to be made before a disaster happens. But, she says, while that would also prevent the expense of building anew, the construction industry has been slow to adopt smart concrete. It’s expensive, Deborah says, and in construction, anything new is considered risky. So she translated the concept into aircraft applications, putting carbon fiber reinforcements in polymers rather than concrete, which has shown more promise.

Because of her interest in science and math as a high school student, she attended “essentially a boys’ school,” Deborah says. While Wellesley was a stark contrast, she was well prepared when she transferred to Caltech, from which she was among the first four women to graduate, and the first ever in engineering.

Even though she transferred, Deborah remembers the College fondly. “Wellesley really gave me a nice, sweet, and personal place to start my life in America,” she says.