Van C Mow

Youth, his father Mow Pang Tzu, and education

Mow's ancestral hometown is Ngai Tou, a suburb of Ningbo, in the county of Fenghua in Zhejiang Province. He was born in Chengdu, Sichuan Province in 1939 during the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, just prior of World War II, as 5th of 6 brothers.

His father Mow Pang Tzu, (毛邦初), was a nephew of Mao Fumei, the first wife of Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975. Mow Pang Tzu graduated from the 3rd class of China’s Whampoa Military Academy in 1927 and later became Lt. General of the Republic of China Air Force. In the late 30th and early 40th, General Mow was largely responsible for bringing Captain Chennault, the father of the Flying Tigers, to China. In addition, he was instrumental in establishing the Burma-China airlift (typically referred to as "The Hump"). In 1942, General Mow was assigned to the U.S. to establish the Chinese Air Force Office in Washington, DC. In August 1945, he was awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit by President Harry Truman, for "exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services to the Government of the United States from February 1943 to August 1945." In 1949 his wife, Wong Ay Chuan, and five of his six sons (Van, Maurice, Donald, Harry and William) joined General Mow in Washington, DC, where they lived in a diplomatic residence on 32nd Street, N.W.

In the early fifties, General Mow became entangled in an embezzlement scandal that was covered in great detail in major US and Chinese newspapers and even let to a congressional hearing. The Chiang Kai-shek government of the Republic of China alleged that General Mow failed to account for $19,440,000 (equivalent to about $180,000,000 in 2015). After a protracted legal battle, during which General Mow fled to Mexico^[7] and shared a "luxury" prison cell with the Leon Trotsky assassin Ramón Mercader, the US Appeals Court in DC upheld a lower-court ruling that General Mow owed the Republic of China $6,368,503 plus interest and costs. A settlement was reached in 1958, and General Mow eventually returned to the US in the mid-sixties. A detailed account of these events aired on Chinese TV in May 2015.

Growing up under difficult circumstances, which he detailed in a 2005 lecture, Mow managed to obtain a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 1962. After graduation, Mow decided to pursue a Ph.D. degree at Rensselaer in applied mechanics and applied mathematics. In his thesis he developed a perturbation mathematical method to predict secondary vortex flows in polymeric fluids. Five Mow brothers (Van, Maurice, Donald, Harry and William, founder of Bugle Boy Industries, a clothing manufacturer) received a total of 3 Ph.D. degrees in mechanics and applied mathematics, one bachelor's degree each in architecture and electrical engineering from RPI.

Further career

Following his doctoral graduation in 1966, Mow went on for a postdoctoral fellowship in applied mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University with Joseph B. Keller. One year later, he joined the Applied Mechanics and Mathematics Group at Bell Labs working on computer programs for U.S. sonar detection of submarines off the East Coast of America. He returned to RPI in 1969 as Associate Professor of Applied Mechanics. In 1976, he was promoted to the rank of Professor, and received a visiting scientist position at the Skeletal Research Laboratory of Harvard Medical School with Melvin J. Glimcher. The following year, to broaden his prospective, Mow received the coveted NATO Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship to visit eight European countries each with universities with noted research in bioengineering. In 1982, Mow was awarded the John A. Clark and Edward T. Crossan Endowed Chair Professorship in Engineering from Rensselaer.

Mow moved to Columbia University in the city of New York in 1986 as the Anne Y. Stein Endowed Chair professor in Mechanical Engineering and Orthopaedic Bioengineering. There he started to work on new ways to map joints, such as the knee, shoulder and wrist, for surgical precision. In December 1995, he received an invitation from Executive Vice Provost Michael M. Crow and Provost Jonathan R. Cole, to lead the formation of a new Department of Biomedical Engineering (DBME) at Columbia University and became the inaugural Chair from 2000 to 2010.

Following a highly public dispute with the Dean of the Engineering School, during which he called Dean Feniosky Peña-Mora a "control freak", Mow stepped down from his position in 2011. He currently holds the Stanley Dicker Endowed Chair in the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. The Department of Biomedical Engineering is now ranked 18th among similar departments in the US. Out of 9 engineering departments at Columbia University, only 3 are ranked higher.

Honours

In 1991 Mow was elected to the National Academy of Engineering "For major contributions toward orthopedic engineering, particularly understanding the physical behavior of cartilage and the arthritic process." In 2004, ASME established the Van C. Mow Medal for its Bioengineering Division to be bestowed upon an individual who has demonstrated meritorious contributions to the field of bioengineering; the individual must have earned a Ph.D. or equivalent degree between 10 and 20 years of the award.

Family

In 1973 Mow married Barbara Hoffman, who studied psychology at the University of Vermont. Her graduate work was done at Rockefeller School of Public Affairs. They live together in Briarcliff Manor, NY. Van C. Mow has 2 sons from a previous marriage.

Jonathan, born in 1965, was promoted to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals, Inc, in March 2015. Previously he was the Chief Business Officer (CBO) at this privately held, clinical-stage biotechnology company that is developing novel drugs to treat metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. Jonathan was also involved in two venture capital biotech/pharma businesses in Seattle that were sold for $700 million in 2000 and $350 million in 2006. Jonathan received an MBA from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He and his family reside in the San Diego area.

Mow’s second son, Kelvin, was born in 1968. He is a Managing Director of the Consumer Goods Division at Groupe SEB (Société d'Emboutissage de Bourgogne) in Hong Kong. Groupe SEB is a large French consortium that produces small appliances. Notable brand names associated with Groupe SEB include All-Clad, Krups, Moulinex, Rowenta, and Tefal. Kelvin received his MBA from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1991. He and his family reside in Stanley,Hong Kong.