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Self-assembling Molecules Take the Spotlight at Research Expo 2025

May 5, 2025

Self-assembling Molecules Take the Spotlight at Research Expo 2025

Materials science and engineering Ph.D. student Liya Bi won the grand prize at the 43rd annual Jacobs School of Engineering Research Expo for his work studying how molecules organize themselves into highly ordered patterns on metal surfaces. Full Story

A fully automated tool for species tree inference

May 5, 2025

A fully automated tool for species tree inference

A team of engineers at the University of California San Diego is making it easier for researchers from a broad range of backgrounds to understand how different species are evolutionarily related, and support the transformative biological and medical applications that rely on these species trees. Full Story

Microelectronics Go from Lab to Fab at UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute

March 17, 2025

Microelectronics Go from Lab to Fab at UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute

Little more than a year after the Microelectronics Commons program kicked off, University of California San Diego researchers have already made significant strides in bringing novel semiconductor technologies from possibility to prototype and beyond. Full Story

Quantum Properties in Atom-thick Semiconductors Offer New Way to Detect Electrical Signals in Cells

March 3, 2025

Quantum Properties in Atom-thick Semiconductors Offer New Way to Detect Electrical Signals in Cells

For decades, scientists have relied on electrodes and dyes to track the electrical activity of living cells. Now, UC San Diego engineers have discovered that quantum materials just a single atom thick can do the job—using only light. Full Story


What We Do

 

PhD student Pulak Sarangi (advised by Prof. Piya Pal) receives Best Student Paper Award

Ph.D student Pulak Sarangi (advised by Prof. Piya Pal) was awarded the Best Student Paper Award (First Position) at the 2019 IEEE International Workshop on Computational Advances in Multi-Sensor Adaptive Processing (IEEE CAMSAP), which was held in Guadalupe, Dec. 15-18, 2019. The Student paper contest had a total of 7 finalists who presented their work in front of judges. The second and third positions were awarded to Ph.D students from EPFL and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, respectively.

Testing High-Dimensional Distributions: Subcube Conditioning, Random Restrictions, and Mean Testing

Seminar Speaker
Clément Canonne - IBM Research, Almaden

Given a distribution p​​ on {-1,1}^d​​, we want to test whether p​​ is uniform. If p is assumed to be a product distribution, this can be done with Theta(sqrt{d}) samples; without this assumption, then things get exponentially worse and Theta(2^{d/2}) are necessary and sufficient. Assume however we can condition on arbitrary bits: does the problem become easier? If so, how much?

Seminar Contact
Prof. Alon Orlitsky <aorlitsky@ucsd.edu>

Florian Meyer

Self-Programming Networks: Applications to Financial Trading Systems

Seminar Speaker
Balaji Prabhakar, Stanford University

We describe Self-Programming Networks (SPNs), an ongoing research effort at Stanford for making data center networks autonomous; that is, to enable networks to sense and monitor themselves, and program and control themselves. We present the goals and the architecture of SPNs and two key outcomes: (i) Huygens, an algorithm for scalable and accurate clock synchronization, and (ii) Simon, a system for fine-grained network telemetry using observations from the network’s edge.

Seminar Contact
Prof. Alon Orlitsky <aorlitsky@ucsd.edu>

Professor Yu-Hwa Lo Awarded William S. C. Chang Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Professor Yu-Hwa Lo is the new holder of the William S. C. Chang Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering. This honor recognizes his contributions to the area of electronics, devices and materials. Lo is a leader in the fields of biomedical devices and systems, bioelectronics, microfluidics, nanophotonics and semiconductor nanoscale devices.

Associate Professor Patrick Mercier Awarded 2020 San Diego County Engineering Council’s Outstanding Engineering Award

Awarded to one engineer in the San Diego County area annually for recognition of significant engineering advancements and demonstrated leadership in professional societies, Associate Professor Mercier has been recognized for his technical contributions to ultra-low-power integrated circuit techn

Professor Patrick Mercier awarded 2020 San Diego Engineering Council Outstanding Engineering Award

Professor Patrick Mercier has been awarded the 2020 San Diego County Engineering Council's Outstanding Engineering Award. Awarded to one engineer in the San Diego County area annually for recognition of significant engineering advancements and demonstrated leadership in professional societies, Prof.

Gal Mishne

The Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department traces its roots back to the establishment of the Applied Electrophysics department in 1965, under its founding chair Henry Booker. Through a succession of department realignments emerged today’s ECE in 1987, when the then-combined Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department was split into two departments. Since then, ECE has earned a world-class reputation for producing top-notch engineers for industry and academia.

By the Numbers

$38M+

In Research
Expenditures

17,000+

Alumni

2,200+

Remarkable
Students

65

Award-Winning
Faculty