Students are very excited with the international component of the VI-A M.Eng. Thesis Program.  This year VI-A International will have four students in China at Google, Microsoft Research Asia and Qualcomm.

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 the late Professor-Emeritus J. Francis Reintjes, and his family the J. Francis Reintjes Excellence in VI-A Industrial Practice Award is an endowment fund in the MIT Department of Electricial Engineering and Computer Science VI-A M.Eng. Thesis Program with Industry. Reintjes Award  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.  At the May 2009 EECS Spring Awards Ceremony two outstanding VI-A students, Zhen Li (Linear Technology) and Michael Price (Analog Devices) received the Reintjes Award.  Zhen Li and Michael Price demonstrated outstanding performance in their VI-A work assignments. Zhen completed his thesis research entitled, “Design and Implementation of a True Color Wide Dimming One-pin LED Driver”.  Zhen will remain at MIT and continue his research in the EECS Ph.D. program.  Michael’s thesis based on his VI-A research is entitled, “Asynchronous Data-dependent Jitter Compensation”.  Michael will continue his research as an Electrical Engineer at Aurora Flight Sciences in Cambridge, MA.  He also received the EECS David Adler Memorial M.Eng. Thesis Prize.