SMTA announces Hutchins Grant recipient.

The SMTA (Minneapolis, MN, www.smta.org) recently announced the recipient of the 2002 Charles Hutchins Educational Grant. Arun Gowda from Binghamton University (Binghamton. NY) has been selected by the Grant Committee to receive the award for his project, High I/O Area Array Devices and Stacked CSPS-Issues in Assembly and Reliability.

Gowda is a graduate student in the field of Systems Science with a specialization in manufacturing systems. He has been working with Universal Instruments (Binghamton, NY) to conduct research on a range of topics, including microvia reliability, area assembly and rework, lead-free technology and underfilling of chip-scale packages (CSPs). The award includes $5.000 and travel expenses to SMTA International.

Co-sponsored by SMTA and Circuits Assembly magazine, the grant was established in memory of past SMTA president and industry colleague Charles Hutchins. For more information about this grant, visit www.smta.org/hutchins.

The SMTA also announced that it honored six members at its annual meeting on September 24, 2002, during SMTA International (SMTAI) in Chicago, IL. The Founder's Award was awarded to Tom Borkes, The Jefferson Project (Orlando, FL), in recognition of his support of the association and the electronics industry. The Member of Distinction Award was given to two individuals this year--Dr. Ning-Cheng Lee, Indium Corp. of America (Utica, NY), and Marie Cole, IBM Microelectronics (Hopewell Junction, NY). Rich Freiberger, industry consultant (San Jose, CA), and Shen-Li Fu, president of I-Shou University (Kaohsiung County, Taiwan), each received the Excellence in Leadership Award. As a corporate SMTA member, Solectron Corp. (Milpitas, CA) will received the SMTA+ Corporate Partnership Award.