Endowments to Support Archer Program, Honor Renowned Researcher, Scientific Illustrator

The University of Texas System executive William Huang has pledged $200,000 via two endowments to support students in the Archer Fellowship Program. The gifts were made in honor of entomologist Dr. Yiau-Min Huang and scientific illustrator Young Tai Sohn. Both spent their careers at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., dedicated to the study of the taxonomy of mosquitos and the understanding of diseases they carry.

“The two endowments honor my aunt and our family friend who both lived lives of public service in terms of working for the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.” said Huang, the deputy chief information officer at the UT System. “As a Smithsonian entomologist, my aunt was one of the pioneers working with U.S. Army researchers on the Southeast Asian Mosquito Project, which later became the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit. Dr. Huang, who passed away in 2023, spent her entire career, from 1967 until 2021, working as a Smithsonian researcher.”

Yiau-Min Huang received a BS in entomo-phytopathology from Taiwan Provincial Chung-Hsing University in Taichung in 1959. She continued her graduate education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, earning an MS in entomology in 1963 and a PhD in entomology with a minor in zoology in 1967. Her research career took her all over the world, especially in Southeast Asia and Africa where she studied mosquitoes and related diseases such as dengue, yellow fever, zika and malaria. Huang confirmed the first invasion of the Asian tiger mosquito, collected in 1985 at a port in Houston. Her contributions to mosquito control approaches for human health were recognized in 1999 by the American Mosquito Control Association. She is also credited with publishing research in 62 scientific publications.

“Young Tai Sohn was a scientific illustrator whose specialty was doing line drawings of these tiny insects for the Smithsonian,” Huang said. “He would study millimeter-sized mosquitos and other insects under a microscope for hours and then do line drawings of them diagraming and documenting whether they were male or female, what species and what genus they were. His work was like a flashlight shining on a tiny unseen part of the natural world.”

Huang’s pledged gift will support the Archer Fellowship Program, which is open to university students at any of the 14 UT System schools, including UT Dallas. Undergraduate and graduate students apply for Archer Fellowships at government, nonprofit and social sector organizations in the Washington, D.C., region where their fellowships help prepare them for leadership roles in public service.

“The Archer Fellowship Program is one of the premier internship programs in the U.S., and William Huang’s gift will make a significant difference in perpetuity in affording this incredible opportunity to Texas students,” said Dr. Donal Skinner, dean of the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College, which administers the Archer Program at UTD. “Moreover, it will purposefully help increase the scope of opportunities and, thereby, the breadth of students that are attracted to participate in the Archer Program.”

The gift made in honor of Yiau-Min Huang will support Archer Fellows in STEM, public health or entomology fields at research-related organizations and will be awarded to students pursuing research-focused degrees. The endowment honoring Sohn, who died in 2021, will support Archer Fellowships related to scientific illustration.

“What’s really amazing about the Archer Program is that it gives students from all the UT institutions, both undergraduate and graduate, the opportunity to focus on public service,” Huang said. “If you think about the pipeline of future students who will be Archer Fellows, this opportunity will expose them to the public sector, even if they choose to go into a private-sector career. This experience will help shape their perspectives of the world.”