Matthew Mallory, the son of John and Linda Mallory of Forest, Va., will be the first student to participate in a full-year exchange program recently established by Virginia Tech and the Technische Universität Darmstadt (TUD), Germany.

Mallory, a junior majoring in electrical and computer engineering at Virginia Tech, will study electrical engineering and the German language at TUD from fall semester 2004 through summer semester 2005.

The new exchange program enables select Virginia Tech engineering students who demonstrate academic excellence and a proficiency in German to study at TUD, with no delay in their scheduled graduation. The program also will foster collaborative research among faculty at the two universities.

"I was attracted to this program because of my interest in the German culture, language and people," said Mallory, who spent the summer of 2003 at the University of Stuttgart and plans to pursue an international career path in engineering.

When Mallory began looking for another study abroad opportunity in Germany, he learned about the opportunity at TUD from Jan Helge Bøhn, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech who helped initiate the exchange program.

"I researched TUD and found it to be one of the top technical universities in Europe," Mallory said. Founded in 1936, TUD offers programs in engineering, natural sciences, social sciences and humanities to 19,000 students. In 2003, the university's Mechanical and Processes Engineering program was recognized as the best program in its field in Germany.

The College of Engineering at Virginia Tech is internationally recognized for its excellence in 14 engineering disciplines and computer science. The college's 5,600 undergraduates benefit from an innovative curriculum that provides a "hands-on, minds-on" approach to engineering education, complementing classroom instruction with two unique design-and-build facilities and a strong Cooperative Education Program. With more than 50 research centers and numerous laboratories, the college offers its 2,000 graduate students opportunities in advanced fields of study such as biomedical engineering, microelectronics, and nanotechnology.

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