PROFILE From Refugee to Micron VP Thank Thy Tran for the 1-alpha node DRAM BY JOANNA GOODRICH THY TRAN had a harrowing journey to the United States. Tran, now vice president of DRAM process integration at Micron in Boise, Idaho, fled Vietnam with her family in 1979, four years after the fall of Saigon. " I remember sneaking out in the middle of the night on our third attempt, " Tran recalls. " My mother had to give my two younger brothers sleeping pills so that they would not cry in the middle of the night, for fear that we would get caught and be shot or be sent to prison. " They lived at a refugee camp in Thailand for a year before immigrating to the United States. The IEEE senior member calls electrical engineering her lucky ticket because it lifted her and her family out of poverty. Engineering " became a passion, and still is, " she says. " I'm more excited to go to work today than the first day of my job right after graduating college. " Tran is an expert in process integration for DRAM-dynamic random-access memory-technology. She led the Micron team that built DRAM using 1-alpha process technology. In January the company announced it had begun commercial production of chips built using the 1α technology. The process improves memory density by 40 percent over the company's previous offering and Employer Micron Title Vice president of DRAM process integration Member grade Senior member Alma mater University of Washington in Seattle 58 THE INSTITUTE DECEMBER 2021 Photo-illustration by Max-o-matichttps://www.linkedin.com/in/thy-tran-531369a/ https://www.micron.com/ https://www.micron.com/ https://investors.micron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/micron-delivers-industrys-first-1a-dram-technology https://investors.micron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/micron-delivers-industrys-first-1a-dram-technology