Sau-yi Fong

Sau-yi Fong is a Research Fellow at Columbia University's Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. Her research bridges the history of science and technology with political and military history, focusing on transimperial networks in late imperial and modern China. She holds a PhD in East Asian History from Columbia University (2022).

Her work examines themes such as industrial technology transfer, naval mobilization, and maritime knowledge systems. A current project explores the late Qing naval rebuilding program to analyze geopolitical dynamics of technological exchange. She has also published on the career of Ding Gongchen, a Muslim merchant-scientist, and the Guomindang's student military training initiatives in the 1930s.

Fong's research has been supported by grants from the D. Kim Foundation, Japan Foundation, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Esherick-Ye Family Foundation, and Weatherhead East Asian Institute. Her article on Ding Gongchen received recognition via an honorable mention for the Zhu Kezhen Award in 2022.