It started with a question.
In 2014, Paul Gueye was attending a talk (then President of the National Society of Black Physicists and Chair of the Physics Department at Hampton University). He brought his 12-year-old child, Yannick Gueye, along with him.
During the presentation, Yannick noticed something they had never seen before: a large radio telescope.
“What's that satellite dish?”
Paul explained that it was a radio telescope, a tool scientists use to study planets, stars, and other objects in space. He also explained that some radio telescopes could be hundreds of feet tall.
Yannick looked at it and said:
“It would be cool to see.”
That simple comment became the beginning of something much bigger.
Paul reached out to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and brought together a small group of students, ranging from middle schoolers to undergraduate students, for a week-long pilot experience.
The students didn't just sit in a classroom and listen to lectures. They worked with a demonstration radio telescope, conducted real college-level research, prepared presentations, and spent time having fun together.
It was an experiment.
But it was also the beginning of a philosophy that would become central to everything we do.
Paul realized that we could create as many programs for young people as we wanted, but there was one important thing we hadn't done:
We hadn't asked the students what they wanted.
As Paul put it:
“We can make all the programs for youth we want, but it will never succeed because we didn't ask them what they wanted.”
So we listened.
And what we heard was that students wanted more.
A place for students who were curious
There were students who were fascinated by physics, astronomy, science, and other challenging subjects, but didn't have many opportunities to explore those interests outside of school.
Sometimes their parents couldn't answer their questions.
Sometimes they couldn't find books that went beyond what they were learning in class.
Sometimes the programs that existed were too expensive, too far away, or simply weren't designed for students their age.
And sometimes they were the only student in their school who seemed excited about these subjects.
We wanted to give those students a place where they didn't have to feel like the odd one out.
A place where asking a difficult question was encouraged.
A place where they could meet other students who were just as curious as they were.
A place where they could work alongside scientists and mentors, explore subjects beyond their normal classroom, and find out what it might be like to pursue something they genuinely loved.
That first experience at NRAO eventually became PING — Physicists Inspiring the Next Generation.
PING was first piloted at Hampton University with two undergraduate students and four high school students.
Then, in 2019, Paul moved to Michigan to work at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University. PING followed, beginning another pilot with three high school students and two undergraduate students.
From there, PING continued to grow.
What began as a small pilot eventually became a full-fledged program hosted at FRIB. At its largest enrollment to date, PING has included 11 undergraduate students and 24 high school students, with more than 1,000 applicants seeking the opportunity to participate.
Through all of that growth, one thing has remained especially important:
PING has remained free for students.
It is competitive because there are only so many spaces available, but we have always believed that a student's ability to pay should not be the thing that decides whether they get to explore something they love.
When growth created a new problem
For a while, growth was simply something to celebrate.
More students were applying.
More students were participating.
More students were discovering that they weren't alone in their interests.
But eventually, growth created a problem of its own.
There was only so much space at FRIB.
The program was becoming bigger than the place that hosted it.
And that meant that even though more students wanted to participate every year, there simply wasn't enough room to accept them all.
Yannick understood that problem particularly well.
They were now a junior undergraduate student and had experienced PING from both sides—as a student and as a mentor.
The student who had once looked at a radio telescope and said “It would be cool to see” was now watching hundreds of other students hoping for the same kind of opportunity.
So they started looking for a solution.
Yannick worked with their advisor to compile a list of institutions and began reaching out to physics departments to ask if they would be interested in hosting a satellite branch of PING.
And in 2024, PING was piloted at Central Michigan University.
That opened the door to something new: instead of one location trying to serve every student, PING could grow into a network of programs, allowing more students to participate while giving the program room to continue expanding.
Today, there are six PING sites running their own programs:
FRIB/MSU • CMU • WMU • NDU • NRAO • MWU
And there are more institutions interested in hosting.
The program that started with a handful of students has become something much larger.
But the story didn't stop there.
PING inspired more than a program.
In 2024, Yannick also piloted NucleArt (Nuclear Art) as a fully fledged and permanent component within PING.
Rather than staying in one place, Yannick spent that year moving between pilot programs—hosting NucleArt at FRIB while also traveling to Central Michigan University to help with their PING pilot.
It was another example of what we had hoped PING would do all along.
A student had found an interest.
That interest became an opportunity.
The opportunity became a community.
And the community inspired that student to create opportunities for someone else.
A simple question inspired Paul to create PING. PING, in turn, inspired Yannick to do more for students as it had for them.
That cycle is at the heart of what PONG is about.
From PING to PONG
PONG actually began very simply.
It started as Parents of the Next Generation, a small group connected to the parents and families of students involved with PING.
But as PING continued to grow, it became increasingly clear that the program needed something bigger around it.
The problem wasn't that PING wasn't working.
The problem was that PING kept expanding, but there was nowhere for it to go.
There were more ideas.
More students.
More people who wanted to help.
More potential programs.
And more possibilities than could comfortably fit under a single program.
So Yannick Gueye, Paul Gueye, Kenya Wallach, Elaine Lalanne, and Cindy Achat-Mendes came together around a broader vision.
They wanted to create something that could support PING while also giving future programs room to grow.
In 2026, PONG was officially rebranded as Promoting Opportunities for the Next Generation.
The name changed, but the original idea stayed the same:
Listen to students. Find out what they want. Then help make it possible.
PING is where we started.
PONG is where we're going.
What PONG is becoming
Today, PONG is still a young nonprofit.
We're building the organization one piece at a time.
We're applying for funding. We're creating and publishing newsletters. We're building our social media presence. We're developing this website. We're attending national conferences and setting up booths to introduce people to what we're doing. We're building partnerships, creating resources, hosting meetings, facilitating PING, and creating a central communication hub for our students and community.
There's a lot to do.
And we're still figuring some things out.
But we think there's something special about building an organization this way.
PONG isn't something that was designed from the top down and handed to students.
It grew because students kept showing us what they needed.
And we're listening.
Where we're going
Our vision for PONG is bigger than one program or one field.
We want to create and support programs in different areas so that more students can find something that speaks to them.
NucleArt is already one example of that future.
And there are more ideas ahead.
We want PONG to become a place where a student can say:
“I'm interested in this. Where can I go?”
And eventually, our answer can be:
“Let's find out.”
Our hope is to grow PONG into something recognizable and community-oriented —a place that can exist in many communities, support many different interests, and provide opportunities for generations of young people.
We're not there yet.
We're just getting started.
But we're building toward it.
What we believe
At the heart of PONG is a pretty simple belief:
Every student deserves a chance to find out what they're capable of.
We believe that students—regardless of age, race, gender, sexuality, religion, or background—should have access to the tools, guidance, and opportunities they need to pursue their interests.
And whenever we can, those opportunities should be free.
If a student becomes interested in something, we don't think they should have to immediately know whether it will become their career.
They should be allowed to explore it.
They should be allowed to ask questions.
They should be allowed to try.
They should be allowed to discover that they love it.
And they should also be allowed to discover that they don't.
The point isn't to decide their future for them.
It's to give them enough of an opportunity to decide it for themselves.
Because maybe that interest becomes a career.
Maybe it becomes a lifelong passion.
Maybe it leads them somewhere completely unexpected.
We'll let the student figure that part out.
Our job is to open the door.
It all comes back to that question.
When Yannick was 12, they saw something unfamiliar and asked:
“What's that satellite dish?”
Paul could have answered the question and moved on.
Instead, he listened to what came next:
“It would be cool to see.”
More than a decade later, that curiosity has grown into PING.
PING has grown into six sites.
Those sites have helped open opportunities for hundreds of students.
And the need for more opportunities helped give rise to PONG.
Now we're working to build something that can reach even further.
We don't know exactly how big PONG will become.
But we know where it started.
It started with curiosity.
It started with listening.
And it started with believing that when a student says,
“I want to learn more,”
the answer shouldn't be,
“You're too young.”
It should be:
“Let's see what we can find.”
That's PONG.
Promoting Opportunities for the Next Generation.