story by Russ L. Hudson
photo by Stephen Weissbart '87, '96
“I was lucky,” is how Tien M. Nguyen ’79, ’80 (B.S., M.S. engineering), explains his almost-unbroken string of achievements since he came to the U.S. in 1975.
Others might argue that brains, ambition and a singular drive to achieve – as well as luck – have helped lead Nguyen, program chief engineer at The Raytheon Company, to his current success.
He has earned seven degrees, including two doctorates; he has met with the presidents of the United States and Vietnam; and he has briefed the National Security Council.
His awards and recognitions would take too much space to list, but they come from multiple countries, from the aerospace and the defense industries, and from the world of science and engineering for contributions to education, and social and political activities.
Yet Nguyen has had three strokes of luck: An escape, a rescue, and a lost table tennis game.
“The North Vietnamese communists attacked Saigon,” he recalls. “On April 29, 1975, my parents left me at a dock so I could be picked up by a cousin in the South Vietnamese navy, then went back to get my sisters to fly them out the next day. April 30 is when Saigon fell and the Americans left. My parents didn’t get to the U.S. until 1992, and my sisters are still there.”
The ship drifted for days, with Nguyen and the others surviving on watery rice. “I had fixed appliances since I was five and my father said I would be an electrical engineer. But I was also a table-tennis champion and wanted to go professional.
“Then the American Seventh Fleet picked us up,” Nguyen says. “In San Diego, I heard about a woman, the California table-tennis champion, who played challengers at Belmont Park. I lost two close games and decided my father was right – I’d be an electrical engineer.” 
