Freddie Fu
Encyclopedia
Freddie H. Fu, M.D., is a pioneer and authority in sports medicine and recognized as a preeminent leader in orthopaedic surgery and sports medicine across the globe.
After serving on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine since 1982 he was appointed in 1998 the David Silver Professor and Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery which is home to a large, clinical and research department with 80 faculty members and 60 trainees. In 2010 he was appointed by the University of Pittsburgh as the eighth Distinguished Service Professor which is the highest honor that the University can accord a senior faculty member. There are only seven other Pitt School of Medicine faculty members who have received this honor, and Dr. Fu is the first Distinguished Service Professor appointed from the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. A few of the other Pitt faculty members who have received this honor are Drs. Thomas Starzl (transplant surgery), Julius Youngner (polio vaccine), and Peter Safar (CPR). For 25 years he has served as the Head Team Physician for the University of Pittsburgh Athletic Department. Dr. Fu also holds secondary appointments at Pitt as Professor of Mechanical and Material Sciences, Physical Therapy, and Health and Physical Activity. Additionally he received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Point Park University and an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from Chatham University in Pittsburgh
Ho Keong Freddie Fu is fifth generation of the Fu Family who has resided in Hong Kong. He was born in Hong Kong in 1950 and lived on Bonham Road. His family has been primarily involved in the business community in Hong Kong for over 100 years. The Fu ancestry has been traced back for 27 generations through middle to southern China. His Great Uncle, Fu Ping-Ch’ang, played an important role in the history of modern China and the Constitution of the Republic of China. In 1942 he was appointed Ambassador to Moscow, and four years later signed the Paris Treaty. Fu Ping Ch’ang graduated from Hong Kong University in 1916 majoring in civil engineering and in 1931 was the first Chinese to receive an honorary degree from Hong Kong University.
Dr. Fu attended St. Paul’s College, the oldest secondary school in Hong Kong with the purpose of bringing together the cultures of the East and West. One of St. Paul’s famous alumni is I. M. Pei, the master of modern architecture. In 1969 Freddie was captain of St. Paul’s championship A Grade basketball team coached by Kenneth Ng. At St. Paul’s he started a rock and roll band and played lead guitar. The education he received at St. Paul’s provided excellent preparation for his career path, and he was guided by his mentors, Geoffrey Emerson, Derek Too, and Frank Drake. The St. Paul’s Class of ’68 has recently developed an active blog for the SPC alumni so that classmates living around the world can keep in touch with one another.
In 1970 he followed his older brother and enrolled at Dartmouth College in Hanover New Hampshire. He received his BS degree and graduated summa cum laude in 1974 and his BMS degree in 1975. His mentors at Dartmouth were Roy Foster and Dr. John Kemeny, a computer scientist and President of Dartmouth, who taught Dr. Fu freshman calculus. At the suggestion of Dr. Jim Strickler, Dean of Dartmouth Medical School and a Pittsburgh native, he applied to Pitt Medical School where Dartmouth alumnus, leader, and, visionary, Dr. Albert B. Ferguson, Jr., was Chair of Orthopaedic Surgery. He enrolled in Pitt Medical School and received his MD degree in 1977. He completed his orthopaedic residency under the mentorship of Dr. Ferguson joining the Pitt faculty as an assistant professor in 1982. He continues to have a strong connection with Dartmouth as a frequent visitor, homeowner, and member of the Dartmouth Medical School’s Board of Overseers. Both of his children, Gordon and Joyce, are Dartmouth alumni. Each year Dr. Fu hosts a reception for approximately 100 incoming Dartmouth freshmen and alumni from the Western Pennsylvania area.
He is a member and has held offices in numerous academic organizations including the Herodicus Society, American Orthopaedic Association, and Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF). In 2008 Dr. & Mrs. Fu made a $1 million commitment to OREF to fund a new research award. This award will support research directed by a female orthopaedic surgeon researcher on a topic related to sports medicine or by an orthopaedic surgeon researcher of either gender on a topic of special interest to female athletes. Dr. Fu was President of the Pennsylvania Orthopaedic Society and, in 2008, assumed the Presidency of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine and was the first foreign born president in AOSSM’s 40-year history. In 2009 he was named President of the International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine, the “UN of sports medicine” with a membership of 4,000 doctors from 96 countries. In 2011 he received American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons’ Diversity Award which recognizes members of the Academy who have distinguished themselves through their outstanding commitment to making orthopaedics more representative of and accessible to diverse patient populations. Dr. Fu is the ninth recipient of the Diversity Award and first Asian American.
The Research Division of Pitt Orthopaedics has been awarded numerous research grants including many from the National Institutes of Health. Over 30 scientists and 100 lab employees work in 14 diversified and comprehensive laboratories dedicated to outcomes, molecular therapeutics, cancer, orthopaedic engineering, biodynamics, cartilage restoration, growth and development, knee biomechanics, mechanobiology, concussion, cellular and molecular engineering, and spine, stem cell, and neuromuscular research. Dr. Fu’s major research interest lies in clinical outcomes as well as bioengineering of sports-related problems. He has pioneered numerous innovative arthroscopic surgical techniques to treat injuries to the knee and shoulder and has performed extensive research in biomechanics, in vivo kinematics, comparative anatomy, and stem cell and regenerative medicine involving the knee. These efforts have led to the publication of 424 peer reviewed articles, 114 book chapters, and 29 major orthopaedic textbooks on the management of sports injuries. He also has multiple videos that are featured on the website VuMedi http://www.vumedi.com which is the “YouTube” for surgeons. Over the course of three years his series of anatomic ACL reconstruction videos have consistently been the top viewed videos with as many as 200,000 views and over 400 comments. In 1996 he was a recipient of the prestigious Kappa Delta Award for his shoulder research. The Kappa Delta Award is fondly referred to as the “Nobel Prize of orthopaedic research” and considered by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons to be the highest recognition of excellence and promise in orthopaedic research. Over the course of his 30-year career Dr. Fu has received more than 195 honors and awards.
One of the challenging technical problems that Dr. Fu and other orthopods encountered in the 1980s was soft tissue fixation to bone. In 1986 Dr. Fu’s Pitt team along with researchers at Tufts and MIT developed the world’s first bone anchor. Mitek manufactured the first FDA approved bone anchor, and today there are many other bone anchor manufacturers. Over 1.5 million bone anchors are now used on a yearly basis worldwide. Artificial ligament prosthesis was in vogue for ACL reconstruction in the 1980s. His study in 1987 showed the effect of wear particles from artificial ligaments that can be harmful to the joint surface. Because of this study and the complications noted, artificial ligaments are no longer used. In 1987 Dr. Fu was awarded a Whitaker Foundation Grant for “Glenohumeral Stability: A Dynamic Model”. This led to further joint kinematics studies and to his current collaborations on ACL surgery with Dr. Scott Tashman in the Pitt Biodynamics Lab. Dr. Fu has performed over 6,000 ACL surgeries since 1982 and recently has become a world leader in anatomic reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament. It is an exciting approach to the treatment of ACL injuries. Currently Dr. Fu and his research team are trying to determine if using anatomic ACL double-bundle reconstruction rather than the standard ACL single-bundle approach better restores normal knee kinematics. He is the principal investigator of a $2.9 million National Institutes of Health grant awarded in 2010. His team currently has more than 100 studies completed or underway to evaluate the merits of the anatomic approach by viewing the knee as an organ. He also has ongoing collaborations with K. Christopher Beard, Ph.D., a vertebrate paleontologist, and other curators at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and veterinarians at the Pittsburgh Zoo to study the evolution and anatomy of ACL of the knee. Additionally Dr. Fu is working closely with C. Owen Lovejoy, Ph.D., an anthropologist at Kent State University, who reconstructed the skeleton of “Lucy”, the nearly complete fossil of a human ancestor that walked upright more than three million years ago.
http://pittmed.health.pitt.edu/Winter_2009/wobbly_knee.pdf
Teaching medical students, residents, and fellows has always been a main focus of his academic career. He oversees one of the top and most diversified orthopaedic residency training programs in the country which attracts the best and brightest young surgeons/researchers from the US and abroad. In that capacity he strives to create a new category of faculty and resident staff that is culturally versatile and competent. He has supported a new initiative attracting more females to the male-dominated surgical specialty. The UPMC orthopaedic residency program is the most sought after program in America, and the program was ranked No. 7 in the nation by US News & World Report in 2011. Fifteen graduates have secured Harvard/Mass General faculty appointments, and over 25 of Dr. Fu’s former fellows and residents head prestigious orthopaedic departments or sports medicine programs around the world. The UPMC program has produced more chairmen than any other orthopaedic program. In December 2010 Dr. and Mrs. Fu established the Freddie and Hilda Fu Endowed Fund in Orthopaedic Surgery by donating $1million to the University of Pittsburgh to support education and training programs in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery.
In 1982 Dr. Ferguson named Dr. Fu Chief of Sports Medicine. At that time he not only managed the day-to-day activities but also began building a solid foundation for the program’s long-term strategic goals. Sports medicine was a new discipline and not respected as a division-level subspecialty. The Division had a very humble beginning with 1,000 sq. ft. of space dedicated to sports medicine and was built from the ground up. Because it was successful in providing clinical care, education, and research and had a good team of doctors, the Division was able to grow. His appointment as Chief was marked by productivity and performance as indicated by the Division of Sports Medicine’s accelerated growth to a world-class program within a short span of ten years.
In 2000, Dr. Fu was primarily responsible for the conception and oversight of the design and construction of the $80 million UPMC Sports Performance Complex and oversees one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive sports medicine centers which has become a magnet for more than 600 visiting surgeons and fellows from 50 countries and six continents. Over the years he has effectively nurtured these professional relationships and established worldwide network of surgeons and researchers that extends far beyond US borders. The Center has a multidisciplinary approach to sports injuries and performance and is the first of its kind in the US to have the resources of a major academic and clinical system with professional and collegiate sports team programs. In 1994 the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine was rated as one of the top ten centers in the United States in Men’s Journal magazine and again in 1998 in Self Magazine. It attracts local, national, and international patients; and hundreds of elite world-class athletes have been treated at the Center.
Dr. Fu is very active in the Pittsburgh community and promotes the Pittsburgh region at every opportunity. He has served as Chairman of the Board and Executive Medical Director of the City of Pittsburgh Marathon; Company Physician and member of the Board of Trustees of the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Pittsburgh Opera, Make-A-Wish Foundation of Western Pennsylvania; and Team Physician for Mt. Lebanon High School. He is the past president of the Children’s Festival Chorus, a member of the Western Pennsylvania Olympic Committee, an honorary board member of the Parental Stress Center, and the 2002 President of Dapper Dan Charities. He received the Pittsburgh Man of the Year in Sciences Award in 1990 and in 2004 was named Vectors/Pittsburgh Man of the Year for Community Service. In 1993 he was voted “Best Orthopaedic Sports Medicine Physician” by Pittsburgh Magazine. He was selected through a nationwide poll of leading physicians in the Best Doctors in America for Orthopaedic Surgery with special emphasis on Sports Medicine and Arthroscopy. In 1996 Dr. Fu was singled out for excellence in clinical practice in the field of Sports Medicine/Arthroscopy and was featured as “Top Doc” on the cover of Pittsburgh Magazine. In 1999 Dr. Fu was named one of the 100 Pittsburghers of the Century by Pittsburgh Magazine. He was No. 47 and others include Andrew Carnegie (No. 3), George Westinghouse (No. 5), Dr. Jonas Salk (No. 9) and Dr. Thomas Starzl (No. 13). In 2007 he was honored with the History Makers Award in the field of Medicine and Health by the Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center.
Freddie loves vinyl phonograph records, the music and songs of the 60s, “Mamma Mia”, and “Jersey Boys”. Although he doesn’t bike as much as he did in the past he is still passionate about cycling and very involved with the UPMC Cycling Team and Team Freddie Fu. Would you believe that he’s a “foodie” and member of the Pittsburgh Magazine restaurant review panel! In fact LuLu Noodles, a Chinese restaurant on the Pitt campus, has a noodle dish named after him, the Dr. Fu Special. In 2007 following a trip to South Africa where Dr. Fu lectured on the anatomically correct ACL reconstruction procedure, the “double bundle”, local Durban band “The Spare Keys” wrote and recorded “The Double Bundle Song”. http://www.thesparekeys.co.za Dr. Fu’s goal has always been to balance work and family and have fun at work.
Dr. Fu is married to Hilda Pang Fu, a graduate of St. Stephen’s Girls’ School and Hong Kong University. Hilda holds a Master of Library Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh and a Master of Public Management degree from Carnegie Mellon University. She is a porcelain painter as well as founder and president of Luminari, a Pittsburgh based non-profit formed to broaden minds and inspire innovation. She has served as Director of External Relations of the Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, Executive Director of Summer Programs at Point Park University, founding Director of the Pittsburgh Regional Champions, creator of the Pittsburgh Regional Brag Book and former chairwoman of the board of Women and Girls Foundation of Southwestern Pennsylvania, and founding board member of ToonSeum. Freddie and Hilda have two children and three grandchildren and love being grandparents.
After serving on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine since 1982 he was appointed in 1998 the David Silver Professor and Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery which is home to a large, clinical and research department with 80 faculty members and 60 trainees. In 2010 he was appointed by the University of Pittsburgh as the eighth Distinguished Service Professor which is the highest honor that the University can accord a senior faculty member. There are only seven other Pitt School of Medicine faculty members who have received this honor, and Dr. Fu is the first Distinguished Service Professor appointed from the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. A few of the other Pitt faculty members who have received this honor are Drs. Thomas Starzl (transplant surgery), Julius Youngner (polio vaccine), and Peter Safar (CPR). For 25 years he has served as the Head Team Physician for the University of Pittsburgh Athletic Department. Dr. Fu also holds secondary appointments at Pitt as Professor of Mechanical and Material Sciences, Physical Therapy, and Health and Physical Activity. Additionally he received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Point Park University and an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from Chatham University in Pittsburgh
Ho Keong Freddie Fu is fifth generation of the Fu Family who has resided in Hong Kong. He was born in Hong Kong in 1950 and lived on Bonham Road. His family has been primarily involved in the business community in Hong Kong for over 100 years. The Fu ancestry has been traced back for 27 generations through middle to southern China. His Great Uncle, Fu Ping-Ch’ang, played an important role in the history of modern China and the Constitution of the Republic of China. In 1942 he was appointed Ambassador to Moscow, and four years later signed the Paris Treaty. Fu Ping Ch’ang graduated from Hong Kong University in 1916 majoring in civil engineering and in 1931 was the first Chinese to receive an honorary degree from Hong Kong University.
Dr. Fu attended St. Paul’s College, the oldest secondary school in Hong Kong with the purpose of bringing together the cultures of the East and West. One of St. Paul’s famous alumni is I. M. Pei, the master of modern architecture. In 1969 Freddie was captain of St. Paul’s championship A Grade basketball team coached by Kenneth Ng. At St. Paul’s he started a rock and roll band and played lead guitar. The education he received at St. Paul’s provided excellent preparation for his career path, and he was guided by his mentors, Geoffrey Emerson, Derek Too, and Frank Drake. The St. Paul’s Class of ’68 has recently developed an active blog for the SPC alumni so that classmates living around the world can keep in touch with one another.
In 1970 he followed his older brother and enrolled at Dartmouth College in Hanover New Hampshire. He received his BS degree and graduated summa cum laude in 1974 and his BMS degree in 1975. His mentors at Dartmouth were Roy Foster and Dr. John Kemeny, a computer scientist and President of Dartmouth, who taught Dr. Fu freshman calculus. At the suggestion of Dr. Jim Strickler, Dean of Dartmouth Medical School and a Pittsburgh native, he applied to Pitt Medical School where Dartmouth alumnus, leader, and, visionary, Dr. Albert B. Ferguson, Jr., was Chair of Orthopaedic Surgery. He enrolled in Pitt Medical School and received his MD degree in 1977. He completed his orthopaedic residency under the mentorship of Dr. Ferguson joining the Pitt faculty as an assistant professor in 1982. He continues to have a strong connection with Dartmouth as a frequent visitor, homeowner, and member of the Dartmouth Medical School’s Board of Overseers. Both of his children, Gordon and Joyce, are Dartmouth alumni. Each year Dr. Fu hosts a reception for approximately 100 incoming Dartmouth freshmen and alumni from the Western Pennsylvania area.
He is a member and has held offices in numerous academic organizations including the Herodicus Society, American Orthopaedic Association, and Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF). In 2008 Dr. & Mrs. Fu made a $1 million commitment to OREF to fund a new research award. This award will support research directed by a female orthopaedic surgeon researcher on a topic related to sports medicine or by an orthopaedic surgeon researcher of either gender on a topic of special interest to female athletes. Dr. Fu was President of the Pennsylvania Orthopaedic Society and, in 2008, assumed the Presidency of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine and was the first foreign born president in AOSSM’s 40-year history. In 2009 he was named President of the International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine, the “UN of sports medicine” with a membership of 4,000 doctors from 96 countries. In 2011 he received American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons’ Diversity Award which recognizes members of the Academy who have distinguished themselves through their outstanding commitment to making orthopaedics more representative of and accessible to diverse patient populations. Dr. Fu is the ninth recipient of the Diversity Award and first Asian American.
The Research Division of Pitt Orthopaedics has been awarded numerous research grants including many from the National Institutes of Health. Over 30 scientists and 100 lab employees work in 14 diversified and comprehensive laboratories dedicated to outcomes, molecular therapeutics, cancer, orthopaedic engineering, biodynamics, cartilage restoration, growth and development, knee biomechanics, mechanobiology, concussion, cellular and molecular engineering, and spine, stem cell, and neuromuscular research. Dr. Fu’s major research interest lies in clinical outcomes as well as bioengineering of sports-related problems. He has pioneered numerous innovative arthroscopic surgical techniques to treat injuries to the knee and shoulder and has performed extensive research in biomechanics, in vivo kinematics, comparative anatomy, and stem cell and regenerative medicine involving the knee. These efforts have led to the publication of 424 peer reviewed articles, 114 book chapters, and 29 major orthopaedic textbooks on the management of sports injuries. He also has multiple videos that are featured on the website VuMedi http://www.vumedi.com which is the “YouTube” for surgeons. Over the course of three years his series of anatomic ACL reconstruction videos have consistently been the top viewed videos with as many as 200,000 views and over 400 comments. In 1996 he was a recipient of the prestigious Kappa Delta Award for his shoulder research. The Kappa Delta Award is fondly referred to as the “Nobel Prize of orthopaedic research” and considered by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons to be the highest recognition of excellence and promise in orthopaedic research. Over the course of his 30-year career Dr. Fu has received more than 195 honors and awards.
One of the challenging technical problems that Dr. Fu and other orthopods encountered in the 1980s was soft tissue fixation to bone. In 1986 Dr. Fu’s Pitt team along with researchers at Tufts and MIT developed the world’s first bone anchor. Mitek manufactured the first FDA approved bone anchor, and today there are many other bone anchor manufacturers. Over 1.5 million bone anchors are now used on a yearly basis worldwide. Artificial ligament prosthesis was in vogue for ACL reconstruction in the 1980s. His study in 1987 showed the effect of wear particles from artificial ligaments that can be harmful to the joint surface. Because of this study and the complications noted, artificial ligaments are no longer used. In 1987 Dr. Fu was awarded a Whitaker Foundation Grant for “Glenohumeral Stability: A Dynamic Model”. This led to further joint kinematics studies and to his current collaborations on ACL surgery with Dr. Scott Tashman in the Pitt Biodynamics Lab. Dr. Fu has performed over 6,000 ACL surgeries since 1982 and recently has become a world leader in anatomic reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament. It is an exciting approach to the treatment of ACL injuries. Currently Dr. Fu and his research team are trying to determine if using anatomic ACL double-bundle reconstruction rather than the standard ACL single-bundle approach better restores normal knee kinematics. He is the principal investigator of a $2.9 million National Institutes of Health grant awarded in 2010. His team currently has more than 100 studies completed or underway to evaluate the merits of the anatomic approach by viewing the knee as an organ. He also has ongoing collaborations with K. Christopher Beard, Ph.D., a vertebrate paleontologist, and other curators at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and veterinarians at the Pittsburgh Zoo to study the evolution and anatomy of ACL of the knee. Additionally Dr. Fu is working closely with C. Owen Lovejoy, Ph.D., an anthropologist at Kent State University, who reconstructed the skeleton of “Lucy”, the nearly complete fossil of a human ancestor that walked upright more than three million years ago.
http://pittmed.health.pitt.edu/Winter_2009/wobbly_knee.pdf
Teaching medical students, residents, and fellows has always been a main focus of his academic career. He oversees one of the top and most diversified orthopaedic residency training programs in the country which attracts the best and brightest young surgeons/researchers from the US and abroad. In that capacity he strives to create a new category of faculty and resident staff that is culturally versatile and competent. He has supported a new initiative attracting more females to the male-dominated surgical specialty. The UPMC orthopaedic residency program is the most sought after program in America, and the program was ranked No. 7 in the nation by US News & World Report in 2011. Fifteen graduates have secured Harvard/Mass General faculty appointments, and over 25 of Dr. Fu’s former fellows and residents head prestigious orthopaedic departments or sports medicine programs around the world. The UPMC program has produced more chairmen than any other orthopaedic program. In December 2010 Dr. and Mrs. Fu established the Freddie and Hilda Fu Endowed Fund in Orthopaedic Surgery by donating $1million to the University of Pittsburgh to support education and training programs in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery.
In 1982 Dr. Ferguson named Dr. Fu Chief of Sports Medicine. At that time he not only managed the day-to-day activities but also began building a solid foundation for the program’s long-term strategic goals. Sports medicine was a new discipline and not respected as a division-level subspecialty. The Division had a very humble beginning with 1,000 sq. ft. of space dedicated to sports medicine and was built from the ground up. Because it was successful in providing clinical care, education, and research and had a good team of doctors, the Division was able to grow. His appointment as Chief was marked by productivity and performance as indicated by the Division of Sports Medicine’s accelerated growth to a world-class program within a short span of ten years.
In 2000, Dr. Fu was primarily responsible for the conception and oversight of the design and construction of the $80 million UPMC Sports Performance Complex and oversees one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive sports medicine centers which has become a magnet for more than 600 visiting surgeons and fellows from 50 countries and six continents. Over the years he has effectively nurtured these professional relationships and established worldwide network of surgeons and researchers that extends far beyond US borders. The Center has a multidisciplinary approach to sports injuries and performance and is the first of its kind in the US to have the resources of a major academic and clinical system with professional and collegiate sports team programs. In 1994 the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine was rated as one of the top ten centers in the United States in Men’s Journal magazine and again in 1998 in Self Magazine. It attracts local, national, and international patients; and hundreds of elite world-class athletes have been treated at the Center.
Dr. Fu is very active in the Pittsburgh community and promotes the Pittsburgh region at every opportunity. He has served as Chairman of the Board and Executive Medical Director of the City of Pittsburgh Marathon; Company Physician and member of the Board of Trustees of the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Pittsburgh Opera, Make-A-Wish Foundation of Western Pennsylvania; and Team Physician for Mt. Lebanon High School. He is the past president of the Children’s Festival Chorus, a member of the Western Pennsylvania Olympic Committee, an honorary board member of the Parental Stress Center, and the 2002 President of Dapper Dan Charities. He received the Pittsburgh Man of the Year in Sciences Award in 1990 and in 2004 was named Vectors/Pittsburgh Man of the Year for Community Service. In 1993 he was voted “Best Orthopaedic Sports Medicine Physician” by Pittsburgh Magazine. He was selected through a nationwide poll of leading physicians in the Best Doctors in America for Orthopaedic Surgery with special emphasis on Sports Medicine and Arthroscopy. In 1996 Dr. Fu was singled out for excellence in clinical practice in the field of Sports Medicine/Arthroscopy and was featured as “Top Doc” on the cover of Pittsburgh Magazine. In 1999 Dr. Fu was named one of the 100 Pittsburghers of the Century by Pittsburgh Magazine. He was No. 47 and others include Andrew Carnegie (No. 3), George Westinghouse (No. 5), Dr. Jonas Salk (No. 9) and Dr. Thomas Starzl (No. 13). In 2007 he was honored with the History Makers Award in the field of Medicine and Health by the Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center.
Freddie loves vinyl phonograph records, the music and songs of the 60s, “Mamma Mia”, and “Jersey Boys”. Although he doesn’t bike as much as he did in the past he is still passionate about cycling and very involved with the UPMC Cycling Team and Team Freddie Fu. Would you believe that he’s a “foodie” and member of the Pittsburgh Magazine restaurant review panel! In fact LuLu Noodles, a Chinese restaurant on the Pitt campus, has a noodle dish named after him, the Dr. Fu Special. In 2007 following a trip to South Africa where Dr. Fu lectured on the anatomically correct ACL reconstruction procedure, the “double bundle”, local Durban band “The Spare Keys” wrote and recorded “The Double Bundle Song”. http://www.thesparekeys.co.za Dr. Fu’s goal has always been to balance work and family and have fun at work.
Dr. Fu is married to Hilda Pang Fu, a graduate of St. Stephen’s Girls’ School and Hong Kong University. Hilda holds a Master of Library Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh and a Master of Public Management degree from Carnegie Mellon University. She is a porcelain painter as well as founder and president of Luminari, a Pittsburgh based non-profit formed to broaden minds and inspire innovation. She has served as Director of External Relations of the Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, Executive Director of Summer Programs at Point Park University, founding Director of the Pittsburgh Regional Champions, creator of the Pittsburgh Regional Brag Book and former chairwoman of the board of Women and Girls Foundation of Southwestern Pennsylvania, and founding board member of ToonSeum. Freddie and Hilda have two children and three grandchildren and love being grandparents.