Graduate Student Guangtao Cong is Missing
Administrators believe that “as far as we now know,” missing graduate student Guangtao Cong “is safe and we know his whereabouts,” said Dean for Graduate Education Steven R. Lerman ’72 on Saturday.
MIT police investigated the possible disappearance of the Singapore-MIT Alliance graduate student when he was reporting missing by a teaching assistant, who reported being unable to find him a few days after he missed an exam on Monday.
Cong likely took an international flight on Tuesday, MIT spokesperson Nathaniel W. Nickerson said on Friday.
A roommate hasn’t seen him since Monday, and his parents haven’t heard from him in 10 days, says teaching assistant Fei Liang G.
He hasn’t replied to e-mails from his TA asking about the missed exam or from The Tech asking about his status.
Cong’s advisor, chemical engineering professor T. Alan Hatton, is in South Africa until the middle of this coming week.
Cong’s cell phone number is listed in the MIT directory but was disconnected.
Liang, a teaching assistant for one of Cong’s classes, became concerned after he didn’t show up for an exam on Monday, didn’t reply to her e-mail seeking to schedule a make-up, and had not been seen by his office-mates. She phoned the police, who checked and said his roommate had seen him on Monday. But she checked again on Wednesday and Thursday, found that no one had seen him, and filed a report with the MIT Police.
“We still hope,” Liang said in an e-mail, “he is stressed out and has been hiding somewhere to release that stress.”
Anyone with information about his whereabouts should contact the MIT Police at 617-253-1212.
John A. Hawkinson contributed reporting to this article.