"It's a really good opportunity for us as young engineers to be prepared early for such a project, " said Ahmed Madi, 26, an engineer from Abu Dhabi who is in a training program at a semiconductor manufacturing facility in Dresden.

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When he famously gained a manufacturing foothold with the plastic flowers in the 1950s, he says, he was able to engineer critical molding machinery with an injection process made using a Coca-Cola (nyse: KO - news - people ) bottle and a plastic straw, using something he saw in Modern Plastics as a guide.

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One of the volunteers was Ali Amirnazmi, an Iranian-born Stanford-educated chemical engineer who had developed powerful software, which he sold by subscription, for strategic planning in the chemical manufacturing industries.

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