by Hla Min

Updated : Apr 2026

EE Sayas

• During our RIT days, there were about 20 sayas at the Electrical Engineering Department
• The Department offered two options : EC (Electrical Communications) and EP (Electrical Power).
• Several decades later EC and EP became Departments with their own Professors and Heads.
  EC is also known as EcE or Electronics Engineering.
• The Group photo shows 15 sayas.
  One was absent for the Photo Shoot.
  A few were on doing further studies abroad.
• For SPZP-2010 held in Singapore, I wrote an article “A Short and Sad Clip : EE Sayas” for the Commemorative Issue of Swel Daw Yeik Sar Saung.
  Saya U Moe War (Tekkatho Moe War, Chief Editor) suggested the Title.
• U Thein Lwin and U Nyi Nyi (who passed away a few years back) were not covered in the article.

U Kyaw Tun

• Group photo of the “Reunion in January 1980 of the Final Year Engineering Students in 1948 and 49” showed Sayagyi.
• Joined the Department of Electrical Engineering
• Continued teaching until his retirement.
• Recruited Saya C. Ping Lee to join EE department in 1950.
• Children : Dr. Elizabeth (Daw Tun Nu, Ph.D in English), Dorothy
• “Doctor” Tin Aung Win wrote about his beloved father-in-law.

C. Ping Lee

• Recruited by Saya U Kyaw Tun to join Electrical Engineering, BOC College.
• Transferred to the Directorate of Technical Education and Vocational Training at the request of H.E. U Than Aung (his Burmese teacher at St. Paul’s).
• Dr. Win Aung (M 62) wrote about his beloved father in the “Post Reunion” series of SPZP-2000.
• Articles by Dr. Win Aung, Saya U Htin Paw (EE 58), U Aw Taik Moh (C54), Saya Dr. San Hla Aung (C58) have references to Saya C. Ping Lee.
• Saya passed away in Berkeley, CA in 1987.
• Former students included the late Professor U Sein Hlaing.

U Sein Hlaing

• Top in the class of 1952
• MSEE from MIT
• Professor of Electrical Engineering
• Taught at BIT/RIT until retirement
• Passed away a few years after retirement

U Tin Swe

• MSEE from the University of Michigan.
• Excellent in Soccer and Tennis.
• Early Power User at the Universities’ Computer Center (UCC).

U Sein Win

• MSEE from the University of Michigan
• Worked at the famous Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Technical Consultant for the UCC Project.
• President of RIT Swimming, Water Polo and Diving
• President of RIT Rowing
• Line Judge at RUBC Regattas

Dr. Freddie Ba Hli

• Sc.D in EE from MIT
• Director General, UBARI
• Taught part time at EE Department
• Retired as National Advisor at the Ministry of National Planning and Finance
• Member, UCC Advisory Board
• External Examiner, UCC
• Passed away in Sydney, Australia in his 90s

U Thein Lwin

• MSEE from Lehigh University
• Saya taught at RIT and Singapore Polytechnic
• President, RIT Badminton Association

Dr. San Tint

• Taught until retirement
• External Examiner, UCC
• Attended SPZP-2000

U Soe Min

• After training in UK, transferred to DCA (Directorate of Civil Aviation)

U Chin Way

• Joined RIT in 1963
• Active in SPARK
• Was offered a job [promptly] by his interviewers after learning that their boss U Tun Aung (Jeffrey, EC68) was a student of Saya
• Passed away in the USA

U Nyi Nyi

• Joined RIT in 1963
• Introduced U Soe Paing to Dr. Chit Swe
• Passed away in UK

U Tin Shwe

• Joined RIT in 1966
• Taught at RIT and ABAC
• Became monk after retirement
• His demise is lamented in “To the Shwe Duo” (Poem by Tekkatho Moe War, Translation by Hla Min)

U Kyaw Lwin

• Hobbies : Rowing, Piano

Daw Mya Mya Than

• Joined RIT in 1968
• Passed away

Daw Nyunt Nyunt Yee

• Joined RIT in 1972
• Widow of Saya U Sein Hlaing
• Head of Electrical Engineering (Power) Department at RIT/YIT/MIT.
• Passed away on Jan 05, 2000

U Myo Kyi

• Joined EE Faculty in 1959.
• Provided two lists of EE sayas : one for Senior sayas and another for Junior sayas
• Was on deputation when the EE Sayas Group photo was taken.
• Provided video for the 60th Anniversary of RIT.

Dr. Ba Lwin

• Joined EE Faculty in 1959.
• Was on deputation when the EE Sayas Group photo was taken.
• Provided video for the 60th Anniversary of RIT.

U Tin Maung Thein

• Eldest son of Arzani U Ohn Maung.
• Joined EE Faculty in 1962.
• Was on deputation when the EE Sayas Group Photo was taken.

U Khine Oo

• Joined the EE Faculty in 1963.
• Missed the photo shoot of the EE Sayas.

by Hla Min

Updated : Apr 2026

• Phwa Bet Taw of Rangoon University & the First RU Students’ Strike in December 1920
• Passed away on December 2nd, 2020 the day following the RU Centennial, but a few days before his Centennial Birthday on December 26th.

Education & Experience

• Graduate of Mandalay University, Rangoon University and Harvard University
• Professor of Maths, RASU
• Rector, MASU
• Professor of Maths, RIT
• Associate Dean, Assumption University, Bangkok
• RU Sports Council
• Leader, Burma Team to Tokyo Olympics

Birthday Celebrations

• Saya celebrated his birthdays with his children, grand children and great grand children

• Saya Dr. Khin Maung Swe (Maung Thin Char) interviewed Sayagyis. Sayama Daw Myint Myint Khine transcribed the tapes. The book was published by RU Thin Char Mi Thar Su as a birthday present for Sayagyi.

U Ba Than’s visits

• U Ba Than, retired Professor of Mechanical Engineering, paid respect to his mentor Sayagyi U Ba Toke at least once every year.
• The group photo was taken on one visit. Sayagyi’s daughter Pansy Thin (ChE74) provided transportation for Saya U Ba Than, Saya U Tin Htut and me.

Saya Pu Zaw Pwes

• Sayagyi attended RIT Alumni Reunion and Saya Pu Zaw Pwes starting with the inaugural SPZP in San Francisco, California, USA in October 2000.
• Sayagyi missed a SPZP in Singapore due to Sayagadaw’s failing health.

Message from Pansy Thin

Pansy Thin wrote :

ကျမတို့ရဲ့ဖခင် သင်္ချာပါမောက္ခ ဦးဘတုတ် ဒီနေ့ ၂-၁၂-၂၀၂၀ ညနေ ၅:၄၃နာရီက လူကြီးရောဂါဖြင့်ကွယ်လွန်သွားပါတယ်။ ဖေဖေရှိစဥ်က ဖေဖေကို ဂရုတစိုက် နဲ့ ဂါရဝပြု စောင့်ရှောက်သူများအားလုံးကို ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ်။

Memories of Sayagyi

Betty Myo (Sayagyi’s eldest child) wrote :

ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်ကြီးကိုချစ်သောကျမတို့ဖေဖေသည်တက္ကသိုလ်ရာပြည့်ပွဲကြီးကိုကြိုဆိုပြီးနောက်နေ့မှာဘဲကွယ်လွန်သွားခဲ့ပြီဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ဝမ်းနည်းစရာကောင်းတာကသူချစ်တဲ့သခ်ျာမိသားစုရဲ့မျှော်လင့်ချက်ဆန္ဒကိုတော့ဖြည့်ဆည်းပေးမသွားနိုင်ခဲ့ရှာပါဘူး။ ဖေဖေ့ကိုအလေးထားပြီးဖေဖေ့မွေးနေ့မှာကျင်းပမဲ့ဆရာကန်တော့ပွဲကိုမပါဝင်နိုင်တော့ပါဘူး။

ဒီပွဲကိုစိတ်အားထက်သန်စွာစီစဥ်ဆောင်ရွက်နေတဲ့သခ်ျာဌာနဆရာ၊ဆရာမများ၊မျိုးဆက်ဟောင်း၊မျိုဆက်သစ်သခ်ျာကျောင်းသားများရဲ့မေတ္တာစေတနာကိုဖေဖေ့ကိုယ်စားလှိုက်လှဲစွာ‌ေကျးဇူးတင်ရှိပါကြောင်းပြောကြားလိုပါတယ်။

သခ်ျာမိသားစုအပြင်အခြားဘာသာရပ်အသီသီး၊နယ်ပယ်အသီးသီးမှမေတ္တာတရား၊ဂါရဝတရားတို့ဖြင့်‌‌ေဖ‌ေဖ့ ပိုစ် တက်လာတိုင်းဆုတောင်းမေတ္တာများပို့ပေးကြသူအားလုံးကိုလည်းအထူးကျေးဇူးတင်ရှိပါတယ်။ဖေဖေ့ကိုလာကန်တော့ချင်ပေမဲ့အခွင့်အရေးမရသွားတဲ့တက္ကသိုလ်ဘောလုံးအသင်း၊ အင်ဂျင်နီယာအသင်းစသည်တို့ကိုလဲဝမ်းနည်းစွာကျေးဇူးတင်ကြောင်းပြောချင်ပါတယ်။

ဖေဖေ့ကိုအလေးထား၊ဂရုစိုက်ခဲ့တဲ့ဆွေမျိုး၊မိတ်သဂ်ဟအားလုံးကိုလဲ‌ေကျးဇူးတင်ရှိပါတယ်ရှင်။

အားလုံးကျန်းမာ၊ချမ်းသာဘေးရောဂါကင်းကြပါစေ။

by Hla Min

Updated : Apr 2026

Deans

• Rangoon University had Deans for the Faculties.
• U Ba Hli was the first native Dean of Engineering

U Ba Hli

• First native Dean to head the Faculty of Engineering of Rangoon University
• Transferred to the Faculty of Engineering, RU from GTI (Government Technical Institute) where he was Principal and Professor of Civil Engineering
• Credited for the “Twinning Program” between the Faculty of Engineering, RU and the prestigious universities in the USA
• Per request from U Aung Khin (retired Professor & Head of Mechanical Engineering), Dr. Freddie Ba Hli (EE) — the only son — wrote about his beloved father for the commemorative issue of “RIT Alumni International Newsletter” for SPZP-2000. It has been re-posted in the newsletter updates and in the RIT Alumni Facebook Pages. Sayagyi passed away in his house on U Wisara Road in Rangoon.

Interim Deans

• Dr. Htin Aung
• Dr. Maung Maung Kha
• Dr. Tha Hla
• U Po Tha

Dr. Htin Aung

• Principal, Rangoon College
• Rector, Rangoon University
• Vice Chancellor, Rangoon University
• Interim Dean, Faculty of Engineering
• Burmese Ambassador to Ceylon
• Folklorist / Historian

Dr. Maung Maung Kha

• Doctorate in Meteorological Physics from Imperial College, London University
• Professor & Head of Physics Department at Rangoon University
• Interim Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Rangoon University
• Longest tenured Rector
• Rector of Rangoon University
• Rector of RASU
• Rector of University of Distance Learning

• Plays the violin well
• Accompanied U Ba Kyi (Artist, translator/composer of songs”) singing “Hne Yauk Hte Nay Chin De” in Burmese and English
• Passed away in Yangon in 2005.
• Centennial celebrations for his birthday were held in 2015.

Early Rectors

• Dr. Htin Aung (RU)
• Dr. Hla Myint (RU)
• Dr. Tha Hla (RU)
• U Kar (RU)
• Dr. Maung Maung Kha (RU, RASU)
• U Yone Mo (RIT)
• Dr. Aung Gyi (RIT)
• U Khin Aung Kyi (RIT)
• U Maung Maung Than (RIT)

U Yone Mo

• Retired Chief Engineer, Burma Railways
• In 1961, the Faculty of Engineering, Rangoon University moved to Gyogone and had a new name Burma Institute of Technology (BIT).
• Appointed Dean of Engineering at the BIT Gyogone Campus
• Under the new Education System, BIT became an autonomous Institute with the name Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT). He became the Rector.
• Proponent of taking power naps
• U Wynn Htain Oo (M72) remembers how his friends were having fun with the “Ye Punn ရေပန်း” (Water Foundation). Saya saw them, but did not scold them. He said with a smile, “Young men, you can go to the University Swimming Pool or to the Inya Kan ကန် (Lake)”.
• Established the weekly “Yoke Shin ရုပ်ရှင်” at the Assembly Hall.
• Dr. Aung Gyi (Professor of Civil Engineering) remembered seeing a letter from U Yone Mo (Rector) sent to U Yone Mo (Parent of a son who happened to visit his gambling friends at the hostel). Dr. Aung Gyi told the Admin to stow away the letter.
• Ko Zaw Min Nawaday knows Sayagyi & his spouse (Daw Elizabeth Yone Mo, High Ranking Nurse at RGH and a close friend of Daw Khin May Than) very well. Sayagyi and Dr. Aung Gyi were in May Myo during one summer. Sayagyi asked Dr. Aung Gyi and Ko Zaw Min to accompany him.
  They ate Khauk Swe. Sayagyi reminded them not to tell about his “Khauk Swe” appetite to Sayagadaw.

Dr. Aung Gyi

• Succeeded U Yone Mo as Rector
• Rector (1971 – 1977)
• See Posts
• Memories of Dr. Aung Gyi
• Speech at SPZP-2000
• Coconut Episode

U Khin Aung Kyi

• Stood 7th in Burma in the Matriculation of 1949
• He did his B S and M S at MIT
• Professor of Chemical Engineering at RIT
• Succeeded Dr. Aung Gyi as Rector
• Taught at Rengsit University in Bangkok, Thailand
• Provided interview for HMEE-2012 Project

U Maung Maung Than

• BS in Textile Engineering from Clemson University and MS from Lowell University
• Professor & Head of Textile Engineering Department, RIT
• Rector, YIT
• DG, DHE
• Chair, RIT Sports Council
• Hobbies : Chinlon, Music
• Helped establish Engineering at Defense Services Academy

Dr. Henry Cho Tun (Myint Tun) wrote:

I’m going to add a few things about Saya U Mg Mg Than. I’m very close to him and the family and the son is my student. We are all golfers and both of them are very good. Saya MM Than is as good as Saya Soe Paing and plays with clubs that are custom made for him. Hope the following would be useful additions. Thank you

• He did his B S at Clemson and M S at Lowell.
• He joined BIT in 1957 as lecturer -Head of Textile Engineering Department at BOC college
• 1964 was appointed Professor at RIT
• Served as Rector, 1990-1992
• Director General of The Department of Higher Education 1992-1994 and retired
• Served as Director of Studies at DSTA (Defense Services Technical Academy)

Posts

• Administrators
• Convocation
• From BIT to YTU
• Rangoon University
• Three Events in December 1920