Adam Healey is a UNH alum who's converted his experience at the IOL into a job with a top-flight technology company. Healey, who received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1995, had been on the IOL's professional staff while working on his graduate degree part time. (He'll receive an M.S. in electrical engineering from UNH this September.) In June he started working as an applications and architecture engineer in the Microelectronics Division at Lucent Technologies in Andover, Mass.

"Even if you go through a degree program, the first thing industry will do is train you on real-world stuff: how the boxes operate, how you configure them, how you use them." he says.

Computer science majors Manuel Ortiz '02 and Will Thibodeau '03 are testing cable modem technology. Photo by Michael Warren '83

At Lucent, Healey's division works with the high-speed "physical layer" of electronic chips -- the guts of the circuitry that shuffles electronic signals around -- used to communicate across fiber optic pathways. "Any good student who comes through the IOL, uses it to its full capacity and then wants to work in industry will have no trouble getting a job," he says. "I don't think there's anyplace else on earth where you can get this type of experience."

--David Appell

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