BBQ Bill's Beijing bytes
Ten Chinese students had the chance to enjoy a barbecue at Bill Gates's home late last month. The lucky guests were selected out of about 300 interns working at the Beijing-based Microsoft Research Asia, a world-class research lab constantly developing cutting-edge of computing technology.
During the one-week visit to the United States, the most exciting part for the future Chinese computer research backbones was undoubtedly the face-to-face meeting with one of the world's richest men.
Gates stayed for the whole party, answering questions and giving opinions on whatever issue was raised. What impressed Chinese students most was Gates's easy-going personality and his attitude didn't reveal that he was a multi billionaire. Gates talked about the excitement of young people starting up a new company, the future challenges and opportunities the industry faced and the decision making process at Microsoft.
Meeting Bill Gates was simply an extra award for some excellent interns of Microsoft Research Asia and what the interns value most were the chances of engaging in true partnerships with first-class researchers on their projects.
During the past nine years, the Internship Program has received about 2500 people, who are PhD, master, or bachelor candidates from computer science and electrical engineering studies. Students admitted to the program are required to have excellent research abilities, a solid foundation in programming and mathematics as well as team spirit and good communication sills.
(China Daily 07/05/2007 page20)
