Electrical and Computer Engineering

Master of Science in Engineering
Doctor of Philosophy

For More Information

Campus address: Engineering-Science Building (ENS) 101, phone (512) 232-1458, fax (512) 475-7692; campus mail code: C0803

Mailing address: The University of Texas at Austin; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Graduate Program; 2501 Speedway C0803, Austin TX 78712-1684

E-mail: ecegrad@ece.utexas.edu

URL: http://www.ece.utexas.edu/grad/

Objective

The objective of the faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and its Graduate Studies Committee is to provide a graduate program that is both broad and deep, covering the diverse technical areas within electrical and computer engineering. Ten academic tracks within the program support this objective: biomedical engineering; communications, networks, and systems; computer architecture and embedded processors; electromagnetics and acoustics; energy systems; integrated circuits and systems; manufacturing systems engineering; plasma/quantum electronics and optics; software engineering; and solid-state electronics. In each academic track, a program of study can be designed to meet the educational objectives of each student.

Facilities for Graduate Work

Facilities are available for graduate work in almost all specialties of electrical and computer engineering, from experimental, theoretical, and computational perspectives. Graduate activities of the department are housed in the Engineering Science Building and in several special-purpose facilities located in the Applied Computational and Engineering Sciences Building and at the J. J. Pickle Research Campus.

Faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering participate in the following nationally-recognized centers for multidisciplinary research: Center for Electromechanics, the Computer Engineering Research Center, the Microelectronics Research Center, the Texas Materials Institute, the Wireless Networking and Communications Group, and the Center for Perceptual Systems. Numerous facilities for experimental research are provided by the well-equipped research laboratories within the department. The University of Texas Libraries provide a rich source of literature to support graduate activities in electrical and computer engineering.

Areas of Study

Graduate courses and research are offered with varying degrees of specialization in the following academic tracks. Topics of specialization within each track reflect the research interests of the faculty.

Biomedical engineering. The research of this faculty is focused in the following areas: biomedical instrumentation (primarily cardiovascular measurements, including clinical applications of admittance volume measurement), very-large-scale integration biomedical circuits (biosensors, lab-on-a-chip, and handheld MRI), biolelectromagnets (RF surgery, electromagnetic field exposure, and quantitative assessment of thermal damage processes), image and signal processing (feature extraction and diagnostic interpretation), machine learning, and health information technologies (data mining and electronic medical records archiving and analysis).

Communications, networks, and systems. This track involves research and design in the fields of networking, communications, signals, and systems: analysis and synthesis of systems, and the processing of information for the purposes of identification, communication, control, and security; linear and nonlinear systems and modeling techniques; and analysis, simulation, and experimental research for a wide range of communications systems and applications, including information theory, digital communications, wireless communications, digital signal processing, antennas and propagation, ad hoc and sensor networks, queueing theory, stochastic processes, probability, networking control theory and active networks, optimization, nonlinear systems, estimation, and signal, image, and video processing.

Computer architecture and embedded processors. Computer architecture is at the interface of computer hardware and software. Its practitioners are responsible for specifying, designing, and implementing at the architecture level the hardware structures that carry out the work specified by computer software. Computer architects share the responsibility for providing mechanisms that algorithms, compilers, and operating systems can use to enhance the performance and/or energy requirements of running applications. Computer architecture spans many dimensions, such as the scope of a processor (embedded processors, desktop systems, servers, and supercomputers); the target application (general-purpose versus domain-specific); the characteristics of the design objectives (speed, power consumption, cost, reliability, availability, and reconfigurability); and the measurement and analysis of resulting designs.

Electromagnetics and acoustics. This track includes the study of electromagnetic and acoustic phenomena ranging from ultralow frequencies to the visible spectrum. The activities in electromagnetics involve research in antenna design, radar scattering, computational methods, wave-matter interaction, bioelectromagnetics, wave manipulation using artificial materials, wireless propagation channels, microwave and millimeter-wave integrated circuits, guided wave devices and systems, electromagnetic forces (including electrostrictive and magnetostrictive forces), and Maxwell's stress tensor. The activities in acoustics involve research in transducers, microelectromechanical systems, atmospheric and underwater acoustics, and noise and vibration control.

Energy systems. This track involves research in the production, distribution, conversion, and use of electric energy. Present investigations are concerned with renewable and alternative energy, advanced electrical machines, power system-related analyses, simulation of power systems, energy system economics and optimization, open-access transmission, electricity markets, energy efficiency and demand-side management, power system harmonics, power quality, distributed generation, power electronics, electromagnetic levitation, intelligent machines and drives for robotics and control, and electromechanical devices for pulsed power applications.

Integrated circuits and systems. This track involves all aspects of analysis, design, synthesis, and implementation of digital, analog, mixed-signal, and radio frequency (RF) integrated circuits and systems for applications in computing, sensing, and communications. Research in the area spans levels of abstraction from devices to systems-on-chip (SoC), and involves transceiver architectures, data converters, signal processing systems, integrated bio-chips, high-performance and low-power design, fault tolerance, design for manufacturability (DFM), design for test (DFT), verification, and computer-aided design (CAD).

Manufacturing systems engineering. This track emphasizes the application of computers, information sciences, and information systems to the development of equipment and software systems for manufacturing. Students take the required core courses, Electrical Engineering 380N (Topic 7: Design of Computer-Controlled Systems), 380N (Topic 9: Fundamentals of Robotics and Mechatronics), and 390C, and additional elective courses in a specialized option. These specialization options include integrated circuit manufacturing and factory automation, including development of new test and measurement equipment.

Plasma/quantum electronics and optics. This track involves research in plasma dynamics, optics, quantum-optic and photonic devices, and plasma processing of semiconductors. Plasma investigations include the design of plasma diagnostics, high-order spectral analysis of plasma waves, and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Research in quantum electronics includes optical systems, lasers and laser applications, optical signal processing, optoelectronic devices, and lightwave systems. Investigations include quantum transport studies of double barrier heterostructures, components for very-high-speed communications and computation, high-energy laser applications in materials synthesis and processing, nanophotonic devices and materials, and plasmonics.

Software engineering. This track involves all aspects of engineering software systems. In addition to the problem of requirements, research and study in the area addresses architecting, designing, building, testing, analyzing, evaluating, deploying, maintaining, and evolving software systems. Problems investigated include theory, techniques, methods, processes, tools, middleware, and environments for all types of software systems in all types of domains and applications. This area of study is also available through the alternatively scheduled program in software engineering to professionals who are working full time.

Solid-state electronics. This track focuses on the development and improvement of micro- and nanoelectronic, optoelectronic, and electromechanical devices, and associated materials for a variety of applications. Devices include nanoscale and nontraditional complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) transistors, and beyond CMOS transistors; photodetectors, photodiodes and lasers, solar cells, and nanostructure optical metamaterials; and electronic and microelectromechanical sensors and actuators including chemical and biological sensors. Material systems include unstrained and strained conventional column IV and III-V semiconductors; organics and polymers; novel materials such as graphene and topological insulators; and insulators such as silicon dioxide and high and low dielectric permittivity materials; along with their thin films and heterostructures.

Graduate Studies Committee

The following faculty members served on the Graduate Studies Committee in the spring semester 2013.

Jacob A Abraham J K Aggarwal Deji Akinwande Andrea Alu Jeffrey G Andrews Aristotle Arapostathis Adnan Aziz Francois Baccelli Chandrajit L Bajaj Ross Baldick Sanjay K Banerjee Seth R Bank Suzanne Barber Don S Batory Michael F Becker Mikhail A Belkin Adela Ben-Yakar Alan C Bovik Constantine Caramanis Craig M Chase Ray T Chen Julian Cheng Derek Chiou Michael D Dahlin Gustavo A De Veciana Inderjit S Dhillon Georgios-Alex Dimakis Ananth Dodabalapur Mircea D Driga Andrew K Dunn Stanislav Emelianov Mattan Erez Brian L Evans Robert H Flake Donald S Fussell Vijay K Garg Andreas M Gerstlauer Ranjit Gharpurey Joydeep Ghosh John B Goodenough Neal A Hall Gary A Hallock Mark F Hamilton Arjang Hassibi Robert W Heath Jr Paul S Ho

Warren A Hunt Jr Vijay Janapa Reddi Lizy K John Christine L Julien Sarfraz Khurshid Miryung Kim Alexis Kwasinski Jack C Lee Calvin Lin Hao Ling Mia K Markey Kathryn S McKinley Robert M Metcalfe Thomas E Milner J S Moore II Dean P Neikirk Michael E Orshansky Zhigang Pan Yale N Patt John A Pearce Dewayne E Perry Keshav K Pingali Leonard F Register Rodney S Ruoff Henry G Rylander III Sujay Sanghavi Surya Santoso Sanjay Shakkottai Peter H Stone Nan Sun Earl E Swartzlander Jr Ahmed Hossam Tewfik Nur A Touba James W Tunnell Emanuel Tutuc Jonathan W Valvano Haris Vikalo Sriram Vishwanath T R Viswanathan Zheng Wang Preston S Wilson Emmett Witchel Ali E Yilmaz Edward T Yu Xiaojing Zhang

Admission Requirements

To enter the graduate program of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, a student should normally have an undergraduate degree in this field. A student with a degree in another field may enter if his or her background is appropriate for the chosen academic track of specialization; however, the academic-track adviser or supervising professor may require the student to complete additional coursework to address any academic deficiencies. Standards for entrance into the program generally exceed the minimum standards established by the University; an admissions committee in each academic track recommends admission or denial of admission of individual applicants.

Graduate students in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering are expected to be proficient in English. Any student who does not meet the proficiency standards of the University may be required to complete a three-semester-hour English course. The course is counted toward the student’s course load for the semester but is not counted toward the fulfillment of course requirements for the graduate degree.