It was no wonder that the 2500th PDEng diploma would be awarded to a foreign trainee yesterday, given that all eleven trainees who took part in yesterday’s award ceremony are of foreign descent. At present there are 250 trainees taking part in the twelve designer programs of TU/e. Three in four of these come from abroad.

According to Fransoo there was also a considerable chance this time that someone with the last name of Zhang would reach this milestone, as there were four trainees of that name present in the Blauwe Zaal yesterday. 27-year-old Zhang obtained her Bachelor’s degree at the Chinese Zhejiang University and studied at TU/e for her Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. She carried out her designer assignment for the European semiconductor industry, focusing on the development of a sophisticated inspection technique for power electronics components.

At TU/e there are also several programs in which only Dutch trainees are taking part at the moment, for instance at Clinical Informatics and Qualified Medical Engineers. TU/e emphatically strives to get more of its own students to enroll for these programs. Thus, the program of Industrial Engineering (formerly called Logistics and Management Systems) meanwhile has an honors track for Master students.

At Delft University of Technology and the University of Twente eight designer programs in all are being offered, in which respectively sixty and forty trainees participate. During the first year of the program the trainees follow broadening education, especially in related disciplines and design methods. In the second year they get started on a concrete design assignment within a company .

Scientists from the university supervise them in this assignment and together with experts from the company they decide whether the assignment is worthy of the degree PDEng. The great majority of foreign trainees continue to work in the Netherlands or start a PhD track.