Students are very excited with the international component of the VI-A M.Eng. Thesis Program.  This year VI-A International has seven students in China at Analog Devices, Google and Microsoft Research Asia.

VI-A recently lost two champions of the program; Professor J. Francis Reintjes and John Tucker. 

Professor Reintjes passed away on February 21, 2008. He was the fourth Director of the VI-A Cooperative (Internship) Program 1960-1969 and Acting Director 1993-1994.   John Tucker passed away on March 22, 2008.  John had been the fifth VI-A Director 1969-1987 and Director Emeritus of the VI-A Program 1989-2002.

Through the generosity of Professor-Emeritus J. Francis Reintjes, the

J. Francis Reintjes Excellence in VI-A Industrial Practice Award Reintjes Award was inaugurated at the EECS Awards Ceremony in May 2007.  This $1,000 award is given to a VI-A student who has demonstrated outstanding performance in a VI-A work assignment and exceptional quality in an M.Eng. Thesis. Masood Qazi (IBM Microelectronics Laboratory, Burlington, VT) was the first recipient at the 2007 ceremony. Two outstanding students, Doris Lin (Analog Devices) and Jason Furtado (Draper Laboratory) shared this award presented at the EECS Awards Ceremony in May 2008.  The following awards were also presented at the EECS Awards Ceremony:  George C. Newton UG Lab Prize, Fall Term 2007 6.11 first place was awarded to Zhen Li (Linear Technology) and Brian Wong (Google, Beijing); Michael Robbins (Draper Laboratory) received the William L. Everitt Student Awards of Excellence by the International Engineering Consortium.

Wendi Li (Linear Technology) received the Laya Wiesner Community Award at the May 2008 MIT Awards Convocation.

The following VI-A students were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa for excellence in academic achievement and scholarly attainment:  Nivedita Chandrasekaran (Lincoln Laboratory), Jeremy Hurwitz (Google), and

Huy Nguyen (Google).