(ASQ: Milwaukee, Wisconsin) -- The American Society for Quality recently awarded its 2008 Richard A. Freund International Scholarship to Amar Thiraviam, in Daytona Beach, Florida. This $5,000 scholarship, named after a past ASQ president, supports a quality professional’s graduate studies. Thiraviam traces his fascination with the quality disciplines back to his days as a child in Chennai, India, where he would observe the goods for sale in his father’s retail store and wonder about how they came to be produced. This curiosity about how things are made and a love of numbers, led him to study quality engineering and reliability engineering. He plans to use the scholarship to help him pursue a doctorate degree in industrial engineering at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where he will concentrate on developing new reliability testing tools. “Reliability engineering is the discipline that helps you achieve quality at the very first stage, which is design,” he states. “We’re in a phase where companies are starting to realize that, and there’s more and more emphasis on reliability engineering than ever before.” About the Freund Scholarship The Richard A. Freund International Scholarship honors the memory of Richard A. Freund, a past president of ASQ (1972–73). Freund was recognized internationally for his contributions to quality, international goodwill, and tireless scholarship. Awarded annually for the past 13 years, the scholarship supports a candidate’s graduate study of the theory and application of quality control, quality assurance, quality improvement, and total quality management. It covers the engineering, statistical, managerial, and behavioral foundations of those fields. The scholarship is offered to ASQ members and nonmembers worldwide. For more information, visit www.asq.org/media-room/press-releases/2008/20080730-freund-scholarship.html.