Southwest Jiaotong University
Huang was born in Chuansha County, Jiangsu (now Pudong, Shanghai) on 20 August 1911, the fourth of nine children of Huang Yanpei and Wang Jiusi (). In 1924, he enrolled in Wuxi Industrial School. He entered Tangshan Jiaotong University (now Southwest Jiaotong University) in 1927 and graduated in 1932. After college, he worked as an apprentice engineer at Hangzhou-Zhejiang Railway. In 1934, Huang went to the United States. He received a master's degree from Cornell University in hydrology in 1935 and a doctor of engineering degree from University of Illinois in 1937.