Thomas Wei-Tsu Tang, BS’94 in physics, is an extraordinary competitor.  A two-time Olympian in alpine skiing (Calgary, 1988 and Albertville, 1992), he has also competed in a World Cup and a World Championship in skiing.

“I am proud to be an Olympian,” says Tang. “Elite competition pushes the limits of humanity, our physical and mental capacity, our emotions and compassion for each other.” For Tang, pushing those limits has extended from the slopes to business, to family and, finally, to something else that makes this U alumnus extraordinary, his capacity to pay it forward.

Tang is the founder and president of Apantac LLC, a global leader in design and development of high-quality, cost-effective image signal processing equipment. The company will be celebrating its 17th anniversary in 2025.

“The Apantac product line, which now includes more than 200 items, has been designed to provide the broadcast and professional audio-video industry with flexible and innovative technology solutions for video processing and signal extensions and switching,” says Tang.

Apantac clients include TV stations, news studios and sports broadcasters like ESPN and Fox Sports. “The KSL-TV broadcast house in downtown Salt Lake is a wonderful local customer, they used our equipment to broadcast the 2024 Paris Olympics,” says Tang. “Also, large social media companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon use our products for their worldwide global event centers.”

Prior to founding Apantac, Tang was the director of marketing for Philips Broadcast in West Valley City.  After Philips divested, he decided to help a small startup company in Redmond, Washington and oversaw sales and marketing as well as strategic planning and product development. While there, from 2004 to 2008, Tang grew the business more than eightfold.

"At this small startup with very limited resources, I was working so hard, one day my wife said to me, ‘If you’re going to work this hard, you should work for yourself!’ This put the idea in my head that I should start my own company. I knew that I wanted to make products for the video industry, so I quit my job in early 2008 and started working on how to realize these ideas,” says Tang.

“During the first three years, times were tough,” says Tang. “And when things were not going well, I dug into being an Olympian. When you train, you know the pain is transitory, and you know you’re getting stronger and something better is coming! Athletes understand they’re not always going to have a good day, but hard work and persistence pay off.”

By the end of 2008, he had begun developing products in his basement. In April 2009, the company’s first product, a Multiviewer, was launched. The device allowed one user to view multiple video sources on a single screen or across multiple screens. It received the prestigious Pick Hit Award at the National Association of Broadcasters conference. The award is given to products that demonstrate outstanding technology and innovation not previously showcased at the event.

Since then, Apantac has grown significantly, offering more than 200 products and shipping to more than 40 countries. Tang and his team had been involved in numerous broadcast and professional audio-visual projects worldwide.  Apantac’s customers include national broadcasters, Soccer World Cups, Olympic games and more.  “We now ship from pole to pole, from Greenland to New Zealand,” says Tang. Apantac has offices in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia.

From Taipai to Salt Lake

Tang’s story of determination and persistence started in Taipei, Taiwan, where he was born in 1964. “I was the youngest, and the only son in a Taiwanese family, so the pressure for me to succeed was extremely high,” he says.

Tang attended a strict private school, Tsai Hsin, that started in kindergarten. He always loved sports, but he struggled academically. “My grades were always below average,” says Tang.  “I did not perform well in the traditional Taiwanese academic system. I was not really allowed to play sports, because the teachers in my school would punish me for not doing well academically. I was stuck in a rut and my parents realized that and decided it was best to move to the United States for a change of environment.”

Tang’s father, Mei-Chun Tang, was educated in the U.S. at Berkeley and at Columbia. At the time, he was a professor of anthropology at National Taiwan University and there was an exchange professorship program between the University of Utah and National Taiwan University.

As part of the exchange program, the family moved from Taipai to Salt Lake City in September 1977, when Tang was 13 years old. He attended 8^th grade at Bryant Junior High School and began learning English as a second language.

“In 1977, Salt Lake was a very safe and small town, there was nothing past 7200 South.  I used to hitchhike to get around town,” remembers Tang. “The transition was difficult. New people, new school, new language. But being a good athlete, I was accepted very quickly into the American culture,” says Tang.

He later attended East High School. “At that time, I really wanted to go to medical school but biology was difficult for me because English was my second language. However, I was always good at math, so physics was a natural fit when I started at the University of Utah,” says Tang.

Tang remembers many faculty members in physics, especially Own Johnson, George Williams, Fritz Luty, Dave Ailion and Eugene Loh.

While attending the U, he worked in the Marriott library shelving books and eventually landed an internship in the chemistry department for faculty members Jim Wang and Chuck Wight. “Chuck was a young professor in his 30s,” says Tang. “He was a great mentor and had the most impact on me. We even published a paper together, ‘Low Temperature Photochemistry in Amorphous Films,’ Proc. SPIE 1056.”

By 1989, Tang had essentially finished his bachelor’s degree in physics. When the chance presented itself, he accepted a role at Evans & Sutherland in the computer graphics division. “I remember Microsoft came to campus to recruit me, but working at Evans & Sutherland was the ultimate honor for a U of U student, so I accepted the job.”

“In fact, Evans & Sutherland was one of the largest tech companies in the valley, employing around 1,500 people.  The management encouraged us to transfer between different departments to expand our technical horizon. My first job was porting applications between UNIX workstations, Linux kernels, PC graphics card drivers and graphical user interfaces. I later worked on several exciting projects, including the world’s first F-14, F-16, and other flight simulators.  That’s where I learned about the technology of video processing.” He stayed at Evans & Sutherland until 1997.

A sports family

Tang and his wife, Penny, met on campus in the Olpin Union building. In the 1990s, their student organization reserved a gym in the HPER Complex. “She was playing badminton, and I was playing basketball. After 10 o’clock, when the HPER building closed, a few of us decided to go to the Union to play pool. We shared a table, and the rest is history,” says Tang.

They were married in 1994 and now have three children: Emma, 23, is a recent graduate of NYU, getting ready to go to law school; Calcy, 20, is studying Kinesiology at the U; and Winston, 18, is ski racing in Europe. “All three of our kids are active in sports,” says Tang who explains that Emma was a professional figure skater who has competed internationally, and Calcy qualified for the Olympics and skied in the 2021 World Championship.

When Tang turns to his wife, his sentiment is one of respect and gratitude. “I’m extremely grateful for my wife, Penny. She encouraged me in those early years when things were tough. She came from an affluent family in Taiwan, and during our early years, she would joke about having never been ‘poor and lonely at the same time,’” remembers Tang. “Without her, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”