She believes her software can size up manufacturing.

• Author: Richter, Chris
• Position: PEOPLE

Ping Fu thinks a lot about your shoes. As president and CEO of Geomagic Inc., a Research Triangle Park software developer, she sees a future when manufacturers will turn out goods customized for each buyer. Your shoes will be made to fit the contours of your feet. Your jeans, that of your seat. "Mass customization is all about combining the customized part of craftsmanship with the efficiency of mass production."

The business she and her husband started 10 years ago specializes in digital shape sampling and processing. Using an optical scanner, Geomagic's software creates exact three-dimensional images of objects. Automotive, aerospace and plastics companies already rely on it for customization as well as quality control and modeling.

Fu, 48, grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. Separated from her parents by Maoist Red Guards, she didn't attend school from age 7 to 18. While studying literature at the university in Suzhou, she spent two years investigating the killing of baby girls, a practice that resulted from her nation's one-child-per-family policy. Chinese newspapers published stories based on her research in 1981. When they appeared in the foreign press, it caused an international uproar.

Having embarrassed Beijing, Fu landed in a prison cell for three days. It was a problem the government couldn't solve by executing her. "If they killed a reporter who did a report on human rights and called for the [end of the killing] of baby girls, how would that seem to the international media?" So China kicked her out, exiling her to the United States.

Sent to the University of New Mexico to...