Giving Now, Giving Forward

When Joey Chau was deciding where to go to college, he didn’t spend much time deliberating. His older brother Tom had gone to Johns Hopkins, and that was enough. Years later, when Tom heard that Joey and a Hopkins development officer had been talking about how to give back in a meaningful way, he wanted in. That’s how the Chau Family Design Fund started: two brothers, an idea that hands-on moments shape careers, and a belief that you don’t need to wait to act on what matters.

Tom, Engr ’00, and Joey, Engr ’02, ’03 (MS), grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and coming to Hopkins shaped their futures. Tom recalls the formative experience of an optional lab project — a digital clock built by hand from chips and LCD displays over a series of afternoons. For Joey, it was an early design course that nudged him away from a pre-med path towards a career in biomedical engineering and medical device innovation. Both brothers trace their ultimate career paths back to these seemingly small moments.

Their shared understanding that funding the development of engineering designs and solutions is where ideas either become real or quietly disappear led them to support the Engineering Design Center (EDC), the hands-on design hub at Johns Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering, where students turn concepts into working prototypes. The Chau Family Design Fund is fully endowed, providing support for EDC projects exactly when they need it most.

Elizabeth Logsdon, director of the Engineering Design Center, emphasizes that this funding supports students with project-based learning, “It brings the next thing they need within arm’s reach. This leads to deeper learning and better prepares them for success beyond Hopkins.”

Vara Qi Gunananthan, a materials science and engineering senior, experienced exactly that. Her 10-student team used the fund to precision-manufacture a frame for their Sutureless Mitral Valve Prosthesis — a device designed to reduce operating times during open-heart surgery. That step unlocked the rest: deployment tool development, conformity testing, and pressure testing. “Being able to actually manufacture and use our prototype opened up many new avenues for us,” she says.

The project became a defining experience of Gunananthan’s undergraduate years, and helped solidify her decision to pursue a PhD in materials science and engineering at Stanford University. “It’s very inspiring that our education and success are directly supported by students before us. I hope to one day be able to make the same difference to future students’ lives.”

The brothers are keenly aware that many of their fellow alumni may assume meaningful philanthropy requires waiting for a better moment, or a gift big enough to put their name on a building. Tom’s years on the board of a professional orchestra in Portland, Oregon, reinforced what he already suspected: organizations need not just lead gifts, but a broad and sustained base of support. “A thousand donors each giving a thousand dollars,” he points out, “is still a million dollars.” The brothers see their fund through a similar lens, as an example of what’s possible when alumni don’t wait.

For Joey, giving early is simple. “I want the enjoyment of seeing the results.”

Tom agrees. The time to give, he’ll remind you, “Is never perfect. … but, if there’s something that ignites your passions, see what is possible.”

On what they hope students take away, Tom and Joey are modest — they’re not looking for students to know their names, or even say thank you. What they hope is simpler: that somewhere down the road, when those students find themselves in a position to give back or help get a project off the ground, they’ll remember that a stranger once did the same for them.