Born in China in 1936, Yi Hua “Ed” Ma ’63M.S. spent his teenage and undergraduate years in Taiwan, becoming the chemical engineering valedictorian of National Taiwan University — the start of a great American success story.
Unlike his son, Jeff, the elder Ma has not been the subject of a book and a feature film. The 2003 bestseller Bringing Down the House and the subsequent film 21 pseudonymously depict Jeff’s days on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology blackjack team. Since then, his multifaceted career as an entrepreneur has involved, among other endeavors, founding four companies, consulting for the Portland Trail Blazers and San Francisco 49ers, speaking on the use of data and analytics to make business decisions, and co-hosting a sports gambling podcast. Most recently, he was appointed the chief digital officer for the golf hospitality company Troon.
But after Ed’s death in January at age 88, Jeff used his platform to say that his father’s story is really the one that deserves attention. During one of his regular appearances on sports commentator Tony Kornheiser’s podcast, Jeff traced the path his father followed from China to Taiwan to, of all places, South Bend, Indiana, and onward to Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, where he spent decades as a chemical engineering professor.
As the Chinese Communist Party gained power in the late 1940s, the Ma family had migrated from their home in the provincial capital of Fuzhou to the island of Taiwan. A bright student, Yi Hua Ma did not have to take an exam for admission to National Taiwan University.
He and his girlfriend, Maria, coordinated a plan to further their educations in the United States, she at a nursing school in Peoria, Illinois, and he at Notre Dame to earn a master’s degree. He traveled first, sailing from Taiwan to Vancouver, then riding a bus to South Bend.
“Imagine being a 22-year-old person from Taiwan who as a kid used to catch fireflies in jars to read by,” Jeff says. “He would always tell me that he was so nervous about that trip that the only thing he ordered was two hot dogs, because he only had $5 to his name.”
His children, with their middle-class American upbringing, reflect on their father’s experience with awe.
“I just can’t even imagine that level of uncertainty. You come to a new country, you probably know the language minimally, and you have very little money, no contacts, no anything,” Ed’s daughter, Yvette, says. “Every time I think about it, I feel queasy.”
Maria had a less arduous journey to the United States. A converted Catholic, she flew with airfare borrowed from a priest. Though never baptized to his children’s knowledge, Ed would attend Mass with the family every week.
He attended Notre Dame from 1961 to 1963, earning his master’s degree in chemical engineering. Despite that being one of the lowest points in the University’s football history, he became a lifelong Fighting Irish fan.
“Football was a big thing for him,” Jeff says. “That was so different from anything he’d ever been a part of.”
Yi Hua then adopted his American nickname, Ed, and went on to earn a doctoral degree from MIT in 1967. He accepted a faculty appointment at WPI, where he spent his career as a distinguished teacher and researcher. He served as department chair for 10 years and held the James Manning Endowed Professorship from 2004 until his retirement in 2015.
As gasoline prices rose in the 1970s, Ma’s early research focused on converting coal to liquid fuels. But in the 1980s, the industry discovered an abundance of liquid fuel in the form of shale oil.
“Everything Ed was working on became unneeded overnight,” says Stephen Kmiotek, a WPI professor of chemical engineering who earned his doctorate under Ma. “But what was taking off was this concept of a hydrogen economy. So, Ed pivoted and instead of trying to take a big molecule and crack it and turn it to liquid fuel, he started using his skills and his network on how to take a very, very tiny molecule — namely hydrogen — and separate it from everything else.”
His research led to the development of stainless-steel membranes coated with the rare, platinum-group metal palladium, which can separate hydrogen from natural gas and other sources far less expensively than previous methods. The work, supported by the Department of Energy and Shell, resulted in eight patents. Over the course of his career, Ma garnered more than $13 million in external research awards.
Beyond the lab, Ma always seemed to know just the right way to support — and at times challenge — his colleagues. David DiBiasio, a chemical engineering professor at WPI, calls Ma “my professional father. He was somebody who was really tough to say no to, so he got me involved in a bunch of things that I never would have done on my own. Most of those were successful, and most were due to his ability to see where the field was going.”
While completing his master’s degree under Ma, Kmiotek admits that he was doing less than his best work, which his professor acknowledged with dry sarcasm meant to motivate. “Ed was trying every way he could to have me up my game. Finally, after I handed in my thesis, he came back a week or so later, dropped it on my desk and said, ‘I thought you were good,’” Kmiotek says. “That was exactly what I needed. It was hard to hear, but he finally found how to get to me in the most positive way.”
In addition to his patents, Ma was the author of more than 140 scholarly publications and five book chapters. A fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, he was the recipient of numerous awards. He advised more than 30 doctoral recipients, the most-ever among WPI faculty at the time of his retirement, and he played a leading role in attracting Asian and Asian-American students and scholars to the school.
Jeff Ma and his two older sisters each attended MIT. On the Kornheiser podcast, he expressed pride in his parents, who, including their years before marriage, were a couple for 68 years until her death in 2017.
Maria had had a stroke in 2007 and Ed became her caregiver, “probably the most devoted husband I’ve ever seen,” Jeff says.
“It was really fascinating to watch this highly demanding engineer turn into this very, very gentle caregiver with her,” Kmiotek adds. “He absolutely doted on her and it was beautiful to see.”
For all his professional accomplishments, Ed Ma never failed to demonstrate his dedication to family, friends — and Fighting Irish football.
“He passed away on the day Notre Dame played Georgia [in the Sugar Bowl],” Jeff said, “so I knew Notre Dame was going to win because he was such a big Notre Dame football fan.”
Though that was one of the few times Jeff picked a game with his heart rather than his head, it turned out to be right.
Dennis Brown recently retired after a 33-year career at Notre Dame, including 15 as spokesman and assistant vice president for public affairs and communications.