Chair's Welcome

The field of electrical engineering was built on the shoulders of giants — Tesla, Edison, Marconi, Bell, to name a few — to meet the energy and telecommunication needs of humanity. Out of our advancements in electronics and photonics technology, electrical engineering is keeping the promise. Nowadays, most everything we use in our daily lives has a power source and a chip and implements some sophisticated communication protocol and data/signal processing algorithm.

Cutting-edge research lives in EE. Our faculty and students every day define new directions for electrical engineering and develop new technologies to help address critical societal challenges in biology and medicine, energy, and the environment. Our major areas of research include: Solid State Electronics; Optics and Photonics; Signals, Communications and Networking; and Energy Systems. Students may specialize in these areas, whether it is in the form of basic or advanced-level undergraduate courses, graduate courses, or research in the lab. Whether we invent new material at the nanoscale, whether we make objects invisible, whether we take the internet underwater or inside the human body and sustain it through a new generation of energy sources, our faculty make discoveries in the lab and then bring this knowledge to the classroom. 

It is an exciting time to be here at EE. Graduate student enrollment is booming (with increased selectivity), our PhD conferral rate has nearly doubled, and our yearly research funding has jumped to more than $16 million. Our faculty are hard at work in the labs. Our undergraduate program is thriving as we implement an updated curriculum to prepare our graduates for the workforce and graduate studies. 

I invite you to explore our site and learn about our innovative research, competitive academic programs, supportive learning environment, modern facilities, and global impact.  

Sincerely,

Jonathan Bird
Chair, Electrical Engineering