4/24/2026 Bill Bell for Illinois Physics
Puzzle-enthusiast Wei-Hwa Huang’s $2.5 million donation to LabEscape will allow the Department of Physics’ escape room to establish a new space in Chicago and significantly expand its impact and outreach mission.
Written by Bill Bell for Illinois Physics
Puzzle-enthusiast Wei-Hwa Huang’s $2.5 million donation to LabEscape will allow the Department of Physics’ escape room to establish a new space in Chicago and significantly expand its impact and outreach mission.
Wei-Hwa Huang has played more than 1,000 escape rooms in the past 15 years. He’s a four-time winner of the World Puzzle Championship, a Sudoku National Championship winner, and has played on a winning team of the MIT Mystery Hunt. He’s also a game designer himself and co-authored a book with New York Times puzzle master Will Shortz.
He’s a very experienced team player. So when he chooses to make a gift to an escape room, it’s a big deal. And a well-informed decision.
Huang recently donated $2.5 million to the Department of Physics’ LabEscape, which bills itself as the “world’s first quantum-themed, science-based escape room.” Huang visited in 2025, while touring escape rooms in Illinois.
“What really stood out for me for LabEscape was its use of scientific innovation. There are a lot of escape rooms that are technically innovative, but they tend to all draw from the same suite of ingredients – mechanical locks, computerized displays, magnets, electronics. Occasionally, one puzzle might have a cool scientific object like photosensitive ink, but those would be rare enough to stand out,” Huang said. “What LabEscape does is to have so many of these in one experience, and I thought that was rather unique for an escape room.”
Huang’s gift includes $500,000 in current use funds, as well as a $2 million endowment. It will be used to establish a LabEscape location in Chicago and greatly expand its outreach mission.
“After each mission, we do a debrief with the teams. That’s when Wei-Hwa and I talked in earnest terms about how we want people engaged in science at this level,” said Illinois Physics Professor Paul Kwiat. Kwiat started LabEscape with a group of students in 2016 and continues to lead the group.
“Most people don’t think of the words ‘science’ and ‘fun’ in the same sentence–unless there’s a ‘not’ in there somewhere,” he said. “Science is not well trusted in this country. We want to show people that science can be understood. We want to connect science with the idea of collaboration, the idea of trying things.”
The escape room has a location on campus and also travels extensively, setting up in other locations like high schools and community centers. Huang’s gift will allow that work and impact to continue and expand.
“I was very much drawn to [LabEscape’s] educational value and appeal to science, and I wanted it to find a larger audience than it could inside a borrowed room in the middle of a university campus,” Huang said.
An outpost in Chicago will do just that and give the LabEscape team the opportunity to show people another side of science.
“Three non-brilliant people working together will do better [in an escape room] than three brilliant people working on their own,” Kwiat said.
“Science is too often thought of as isolating, but it’s very, very social. The only way we get good results as scientists is by working together. It’s collaborative and participatory, and we want everyone to experience that firsthand.”