Wayne Wei-Jen Fu

Dr. Fu was my Master and Ph.D. supervisor. Working with him for more than four years, I was impressed by his wit and intelligence, and benefited from his instruction, encouragement and support. Still remember once he compared writing an article with cooking Mapo Tofu and Fried rice during our meeting.
Dr. Fu was a dedicated supervisor. As he said himself, he was 7-11, available for students from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm. We discussed about my thesis on weekdays’ evenings, on weekends’ mornings, even through Skype when he was on vacation. We were talking about the potential examiners for my PhD confirmation on the Saturday afternoon, the day before he passed away.
Two years ago when he could not attend my first conference presentation, he said he would be there spiritually. Now his spirit will still be with me, and with all his students that he have taught and supervised. His precious guidance and teaching will be always on my mind and will benefit the rest of my life journey.
Dr. Fu, may you rest in peace.

Dr. Wayne was one the sweetest lecturers I had known. It had been five years since I took his media economics class but I can still fondly recall his disarming opening act. “Economics doesn’t require a lot of math,” he insisted. Although I only half believed, his avuncular teaching style, repeatedly employed through subsequent lessons, was significant in allaying the anxieties I had. I graduated from the class with a firm respect for his patience and kindness. Wayne, you had truly left fond memories for each of us to carry on. Rest in peace.

Dr Wayne had been a great and inspiring teacher, with a heart and passion for imparting his knowledge to his students.

I first got to know him in the statistics class he taught. Knowing that many of my classmates had a fear of numbers, he often eased our fear by saying that the study of statistics "is so easy lah" with that singlish accent, and flashed that reassuring smile. In class, he was an excellent teacher, making complex concepts easily understood by students.

Dr Wayne was also the faculty in-charge of my Professional Internship when I was an undergraduate. He took this role seriously, and ensured that I was well taken care by the company I was attached to. When he came down for a visit, I was surprised that he wanted to treat me to lunch - something that he insisted that he must do, even though I had initially rejected on grounds that it was “not nice” to have a professor pay for my meal. Even though this seemed like a minute thing, to me this was a very kind gesture. Another kind gesture Dr Wayne did for me was to write my recommendation letter when I applied to the graduate programme here.

Dr Wayne, thank you for all the things you have done for me. You will always be a professor whom I will have fond memories of. It has been a great privilege and honor for me to have known you. Thank you, and rest in peace.

The memories that I recall come from Wayne’s visits to my office and his comments in meetings. His visits were unannounced, not common enough, but always welcomed. Most recently we chatted about Taiwan just a few days before I went there, and also how he had ideas for a research data set I was sitting on - we were trying to figure out how to analyze the info. Early on Wayne knew the course of action, and he was (over time) patiently explaining it to me. He could see the research agenda very clearly, even as it was blurry to me. Another time in a meeting, I recall there were difficulties in figuring out some numbers, and someone said, “well the numbers are the same”, and Wayne said “we can use the decimal points as distinctions”. He had a lot of these little comments that made sense and cut right to the chase. Oftentimes he would deliver his comments very dry and matter-of-fact, when in fact the comments were actually quite funny. This is a big loss for the school. Wayne, I respect you, and I am happy to have known you. I’m sad that we didn’t get a chance to catch-up upon my return as we had planned. It is going to be difficult for many of us I know to walk into the fourth floor conference room and not see you there. But for sure, we will pause to think of you and the positive contributions you made here.