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Meet Phuong Truong: alumna, lecturer, adjunct faculty, education specialist, and mom

June 30, 2025

Meet Phuong Truong: alumna, lecturer, adjunct faculty, education specialist, and mom

Phuong Truong has done it all at UC San Diego: from an undergraduate student in structural engineering, to master’s and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering and now an adjunct lecturer and education specialist, Truong has been a strong presence at the Jacobs School of Engineering for more than a decade. Full Story

Sensitive Yet Tough Photonic Devices Are Now a Reality

June 25, 2025

Sensitive Yet Tough Photonic Devices Are Now a Reality

Engineers have achieved a long-sought milestone in photonics: creating tiny optical devices that are both highly sensitive and durable. This work could lead to a new generation of photonic devices that are not only precise and powerful but also much easier and cheaper to produce at scale. Full Story

2025 Jacobs School Award of Excellence Recipients

June 12, 2025

2025 Jacobs School Award of Excellence Recipients

The Jacobs School of Engineering will celebrate the undergraduate students in the class of 2025 at its annual Ring Ceremony on Friday, June 13. Six students were selected from the nearly 1,500  students receiving bachelor’s degrees from the Jacobs School of Engineering to receive an Award of Excellence from their academic department.   Full Story

Reimagining RFID: UC San Diego Researchers Develop Award-Winning Real-Time, Battery-Free Sensors

June 10, 2025

Reimagining RFID: UC San Diego Researchers Develop Award-Winning Real-Time, Battery-Free Sensors

UC San Diego engineers' award-winning SenSync system turns conventional RFID technology into a reliable sensing platform without using wires or batteries or requiring calibration. Full Story


What We Do

 

Tzu-Chien Hsueh

History

1965

  • Department of Applied Electrophysics founded, following first engineering faculty arrival in 1964, with emphasis on applied physics and integration of areas from physical sciences and engineering
  • Ionospheric radio scientist Henry G. Booker appointed Chair of Applied Electrophysics; Booker previously elected Fellow of IEEE (1953) and member, National Academy of Sciences (1960)
  • First annual watermelon drop by freshman class and Associated Students
  • Kenneth Bowles elected Fellow of IEEE
Top

1966

  • MIT professor Irwin Jacobs turns down faculty position in Applied Electrophysics offered by Henry Booker (his former undergraduate professor at Cornell), but two days later reconsiders and begins teaching Fall quarter
  • 13 professors in inaugural faculty in Department of Applied Electrophysics
  • Booker assembles a group of ionospheric physicists including Jules Fejer, Hannes Alfven, Ian Axford, Kenneth Bowles and Peter Banks who, together, accounted for 90% of "most influential" papers on the ionosphere (Source: Wesleyan University)
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1967

  • John Muir College established as UCSD's Second College; Applied Electrophysics is housed in Muir College
  • Scripps oceanographer Gustaf Arrhenius (grandson of 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Svante August Arrhenius) named faculty-affiliate in Applied Electrophysics, and remains faculty-affiliate in ECE today
  • Construction begins on Central University Library (later named Geisel Library), for occupancy August 1, 1969
  • Kenneth Bowles appointed Director of Computer Center
  • Adolf Lohmann joins as Senior Lecturer and then becomes professor in 1968
  • NSF funds 20-year Solar Wind Project proposed by Booker and Bowles; builds and deploys three large phased-array antennas to measure speed of solar wind using "interplanetary scintillation" remote probing from Earth. Project gave first 3D view of solar wind structure over an entire solar cycle (transferred to direction of Victor Rumsey and Bill Coles in 1969.)
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1968

  • First four-year UCSD undergraduate class receives degrees
  • B.A. degree created in Information and Computer Science as well as MS and PhD programs
  • Department renamed Applied Physics and Information Science (AP&IS); includes 17 faculty; housed in Muir College; Henry Booker is first chair of AP&IS
  • Adolf Lohmann elected Fellow of Optical Society of America
  • Linkabit incorporated by Irwin Jacobs, Andrew Viterbi and Leonard Kleinrock
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1969

  • Irwin Jacobs hires Linkabit’s first full-time employee, alumnus Jerrold Heller (PhD ‘69) on same day Neil Armstrong first set foot on moon, July 20, 1969
  • William A. Coles, first UCSD alumnus (PhD ’69), hired as professor and co-director of the Solar Wind Project with Victor Rumsey. Barnaby Rickett joins Solar Wind Project as researcher - he becomes an AP&IS professor five years later.
  • Irwin Jacobs hosts week-long visit by father of information theory and mathematician Claude Shannon, named as Honorary Fellow of Muir College
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1970

  • Hannes Alfvén wins Nobel Prize in Physics for magnetohydrodynamics research
  • Carl Helstrom elected Fellow of the IEEE
  • Henry Booker receives 50th Anniversary Medal of the American Meteorological Society
  • Faculty in AP&IS grows to 19
  • Central University Library opens (later renamed Geisel Library in 1995)
  • Linkabit moves from Los Angeles to Sorrento Valley
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1971

  • Hannes Alfvén appointed visiting professor; receives Franklin Medal from Franklin Institute, and lomonosov Gold Medal from USSR Academy of Sciences
  • AP&IS faculty size rises to 26 members
  • Lea Rudee awarded Guggenheim Fellowship
  • Carl Helstrom appointed AP&IS chair; leads Communication Theory and Systems
  • Adolf Lohmann founds Optical Signal Processing area that later becomes Photonics and Applied Optics
  • Harvard PhD student Martha Dennis works in lab of Irwin Jacobs while finishing dissertation on computer graphics; later becomes senior engineer at Linkabit
  • Irwin Jacobs takes one-year leave of absence during 1971-’72 to focus on Linkabit organization
  • Graduate programs in electronics, computer science, information and communication theory taught by Kenneth Bowles, Ray Fitzgerald, Carl Helstrom, Irwin Jacobs, Adolf Lohmann, Elias Masry, Pieter Schalkwijk
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1972 - 1973

  • Then-professor Irwin Jacobs returns from leave; gives up tenure to devote full time at Linkabit
  • Victor C. Anderson appointed Chair of AP&IS
  • Andrew Viterbi elected Fellow of IEEE
Top

1974

  • Sing H. Lee joins AP&IS faculty in optoelectronics and applied optics
  • IEEE Information Theory Society names Jack Wolf recipient of Best Paper award for publications in prior two years
  • Space scientist Ian Axford leaves UCSD faculty after seven years to become director at Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy (today the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research)
  • Carl Helstrom appointed Chair of AP&IS
  • Kenneth Bowles begins development of UCSD Pascal as a computing environment for PCs to teach programming, derived from Niklaus Wirth’s Pascal language (published four years earlier)
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1975

  • Bill Coles awarded Guggenheim Fellowship
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1976

  • Jules Fejer retires from AP&IS
  • Peter Banks leaves AP&IS faculty after 10 years to lead physics department at Utah State University; moves to Stanford in 1983
Top

1977

  • Fourth College renamed Earl Warren College
  • Victor Rumsey appointed Chair of AP&IS
Top

1978

  • Andrew Viterbi elected to National Academy of Engineering
  • Kenneth Bowles' Institute for Information Systems releases UCSD Pascal programming language and p-System operating system, one of three offered for the IBM PC
  • Henry Booker elected honorary President of International Union of Radio Science
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1979

  • William S.C. Chang joins AP&IS faculty one year after being elected IEEE Fellow; becomes founder of Electronic Devices and Materials group. He establishes the ECE 136L processing lab for teaching purposes, which turns into ITL, Integrated Technology Lab in 1991 by a group of EDM faculty
  • Henry Booker honored by students and colleagues with establishment of fellowship in his name at National Academy of Sciences
  • Jack Wolf awarded Guggenheim Fellowship
Top

1980

  • AP&IS renamed Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS)
  • Victor Rumsey appointed EECS founding chair; Rumsey also elected to National Academy of Engineering
  • Linkabit acquired by M/A-COM for $25 million
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1981

  • EECS establishes Irwin Mark and Joan Klein Jacobs Chair in Information and Computer Sciences
  • Emeritus professor Jules Fejer awarded John Howard Dellinger Gold Medal from the International Radio Union
  • Professor of applied physics and UCSD alumnus Victor C. Anderson (PhD ’53) appointed EECS chair; later becomes longtime research oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography
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1982

  • Harry Wieder elected American Physical Society Fellow
  • SS Lau establishes the ion beam technology lab at UCSD under the sponsorship of DARPA
  • Division of Engineering created under Dean Lea Rudee
  • The Electrical Engineering (B.S.) program is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, www.abet.org.
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1983

  • Sing H. Lee elected Fellow of Optical Society of America
  • Harry Wieder receives the Medrad W. Welch Award from the American Vacuum Society
  • Center for Magnetic Recording Research (CMRR) established with 10 founding industry members
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1984

  • John Proakis elected Fellow of IEEE
  • Henry Booker receives IEEE Centennial Award
  • Larry Milstein appointed EECS chair
  • Adolf Lohmann receives the OSA Max Born Award Engineering students launch annual Robotics Lab competition
  • Design for Engineering Building Unit 1 approved by UC Regents
Top

1985

  • Jack Wolf named inaugural CMRR Endowed Chair
  • Larry Milstein elected Fellow of IEEE
  • Harry Wieder establishes the solid-source Gallium Arsenide Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) system at EECS
  • Irwin Jacobs resigns from M/A-COM Linkabit on April 1; on July 1, Qualcomm launched, including part-time faculty consultants Jack Wolf and Henry Booker
  • CONNECT launched by Chancellor Richard C. Atkinson to be "university-based provider of accelerated support services for high-technology business and university entrepreneurs"
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1986

  • Victor Anderson receives the Admiral Charles B. Martell Technical Excellence Award
  • Elias Masry elected Fellow of IEEE
  • CMRR building dedicated
  • Alumnus Mark Miller (BS ‘81), former Linkabit engineer, cofounds ViaSat with Mark Dankberg and UCSD mathematics alumnus Steve Hart (BS '80)
  • Alumnus Robert Atkins cofounds Cymer with UCSD mathematics and engineering science alumnus Richard Sandstrom (BS '72, MS '76, Ph.D. '79)
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1987

  • Engineering Building Unit 1 completed as largest building on UCSD campus to date (240,000sf), later named Jacobs Hall
  • H. Neal Bertram elected Fellow of IEEE
  • Adolf Lohmann receives the C.E.K. Mees Medal
  • Larry Meiners, Paul Yu and Art Clawson (then at SPAWAR) plan for the metal organic chemical vapor deposition facility (MOCVD) in EBU 1. The first III-V MOCVD operated in UC is established in the ECE Department at UCSD in 1991
  • EECS splits into separate departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Computer Science and Engineering (CSE)
  • ECE faculty strengths are in communications theory, optoelectronic devices and materials; Computer Engineering undergraduate program jointly operated by ECE and CSE
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1988

  • Emeritus professor Hannes Alfvén awarded William Bowie Medal of American Geophysical Union for work on comets and plasmas in solar system
  • Anthony Acampora elected Fellow of IEEE
  • James Lemke elected to National Academy of Engineering
  • Manuel Rotenberg appointed ECE chair
  • Kevin Quest elected Fellow of American Geophysical Union
  • ECE receives $1.8 million in computer equipment and software from Apollo Computer and Mentor Graphics for undergraduate CAD VLSI program
  • Emeritus professor Henry Booker, department's founding chair, passes away at age 78
Top

1989

  • Victor Anderson retires from University of California's Marine Physical Laboratory (MPL) at Scripps Institute of Oceanography
  • IBM & CMRR researchers announce that they have set a world record by successfully packing a billion bits of information onto a single square inch of magnetic disk surface, an information density 15 to 30 times greater than the storage capacity of then available computer hard disk drives
  • Paul Siegel joins UCSD as Visiting Associate Professor and later becomes regular faculty in 1995
Top

1990

  • Emeritus professor Jules Fejer elected Fellow of American Geophysical Union
  • Sing H. Lee elected Fellow of International Society of Optical Engineering
  • Charles Tu completes the gas-source MBE system at UCSD. Tu’s and Wieder’s MBE labs equipped ECE to become the first MBE growth facilitated department at UCSD.
  • Alon Orlitsky awarded IEEE W.R.G. Baker Award for the most outstanding paper reporting original work published in any IEEE archival publications, magazines, or proceedings
  • Alumnus Ron Reedy (PhD '83) cofounds Peregrine Semiconductor
Top

1991

  • Andrew Viterbi honored with Claude Shannon Award by IEEE Information Theory Society
  • IEEE (Plasma Science) publishes a special volume on Dusty Plasmas to honor Asoka Mendis for his founding contribution to the field
  • Rene Cruz receives NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award
  • UC Regents approve design of Engineering Building Unit 2 to house faculty of ECE and AMES departments (currently the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department)
Top

1992

  • Paul Siegel awarded Best Paper in previous two years by IEEE Information Theory Society
  • Truong Nguyen receives the IEEE Signal Processing Society Paper Award
  • Lea Rudee steps down as Dean of Division of Engineering
Top

1993

  • Harry Wieder elected Fellow of IEEE
  • William S.C. Chang appointed ECE chair
  • Jack Wolf elected to National Academy of Engineering
  • S.S. Lau elected Fellow of American Physical Society
  • Walter Zable Endowed Chair in Engineering is funded by CEO of Cubic Corp. for incumbent Dean at School of Engineering
Top

1994

  • Irwin Jacobs originates letter inviting participation in new wireless center at UCSD (eventually the Center for Wireless Communications)
  • Division of Engineering becomes School of Engineering
  • Robert Conn, expert in plasma physics and semiconductors, is recruited from UCLA and appointed Dean at School of Engineering
  • Bill Coles appointed ECE chair
  • S.S. Lau awarded Fulbright Scholarship
  • Tau Beta Psi formally affiliates as California Psi Chapter of Tau Beta Pi, student engineering honor society
  • School of Engineering begins aggressive growth phase in Information Networks, nearly doubling faculty to 51 in next 10 years; new hires with expertise in photonics, computer engineering, electronic circuits, control, communications and information theory
  • $32 million Engineering Building Unit 2 dedicated
Top

1995

  • Center for Wireless Communications (CWC) established with support from wireless communications industry; Larry Milstein serves as the Founding Director of CWC
  • Pradeep K. Khosla elected Fellow of IEEE
  • Emeritus professor and Nobel prizewinner Hannes Alfvén passes away at age 86
  • Shaya Fainman elected Fellow of Optical Society of America
  • Truong Nguyen receives NSF Career Award
  • Edward Yu receives Sloan Research Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, and ONR Young Investigator Award (all within the same year)
Top

1996

  • In Britain's New Year Honours, former professor and New Zealand space scientist Ian Axford becomes Sir William Ian Axford, appointed by Queen Elizabeth II to Knight Bachelor for services to science
  • Emeritus professor Andrew Viterbi elected to National Academy of Sciences
  • Anthony Acampora appointed CWC Director
  • Alexander Vardy awarded Packard Fellowship for work on coding theory
  • Lea Rudee elected Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science
Top

1997

  • Gabriel Rebeiz, Paul Siegel and Robert Hecht-Nielsen elected Fellows of IEEE
  • Irwin and Joan Jacobs provide $15 million endowment support to the school renamed Jacobs School of Engineering in their honor
Top

1998

  • Jack Wolf receives IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communication Award; Wolf also elected to American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Eric Fullerton elected Fellow of American Physical Society
  • Yuan Taur elected Fellow of IEEE
Top

1999

  • Charles Tu appointed ECE Chair
  • Bang-Sup Song named Charles Lee Powell Chair in Wireless Communications
  • Ramesh Rao and Larry Larson named co-directors of Center for Wireless Communications
  • Alexander Vardy, Roberto Padovani and Bang-Sup Song elected Fellows of IEEE
Top

2000

  • Larry Milstein receives the IEEE Third Millennium Medal and the IEEE Communications Society Edwin Armstrong Technical Achievement Award
  • Ramesh Rao named Director of Center for Wireless Communications
  • Peter Asbeck, Larry Larson, Bhaskar Rao and Kenneth Zeger elected Fellows of IEEE
  • Paul Siegel appointed CMRR Director
  • Then-California Gov. Gray Davis creates multidisciplinary California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2)
  • Kenneth Yun sells YuniNetworks startup and its terabit-scale network switch fabric technology to Applied Micro Circuits Corp.
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2001

  • Jack Wolf receives Claude E. Shannon Award of IEEE Information Theory Society
  • Al Pisano elected to National Academy of Engineering
  • Ramesh Rao appointed Director of UCSD Division of Calit2; division later renamed Qualcomm Institute
  • Alumnus Anton Monk (PhD '94) cofounds Entropic Communications with Itzhak Gurantz, Brett Bernath and alumnus Ladd Wardani (BS '85)
Top

2002

  • Charles Tu, James Lemke and Shaya Fainman elected Fellows of IEEE
  • John Proakis accepts McGraw-Hill/Jacob Millman Award from IEEE Education Society
  • Charles Tu elected Fellow of American Physical Society
Top

2003

  • Peter Asbeck receives IEEE David Sarnoff Award for work on Gallium-Arsenidebased heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs)
  • Irwin and Joan Jacobs bestow $110 million gift and endowment to benefit engineering school
  • IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Award honors emeritus professor H. Neal Bertram for contributions to magnetic recording physics research
  • Alumnus Vincent Leung (PhD ’04) and Larry Larson finish second in SRC Silicon Germanium Design Challenge at TECHCON 2003 with transmitter IC for 3G W-CDMA
  • Peter Asbeck named inaugural Skyworks Endowed Chair in High-Performance Communications Devices and Circuits
  • Sadik Esener elected Fellow of Optical Society of America; Rene Cruz elected Fellow of IEEE
  • Paul Yu appointed ECE chair
Top

2004

  • Pradeep K. Khosla and James Lemke elected Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Charles Tu elected Fellow of the AVS Science and Technology Society (formerly American Vacuum Society)
  • Ramesh Rao named inaugural Qualcomm Endowed Chair in Telecommunications and Information Technologies
  • IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal awarded to Jack Wolf for work on information transmission and storage
  • Victor Rumsey receives the John Krauss Antenna Award
  • Alexander Vardy paper on “Algebraic Soft-Decision Decoding of Reed-Solomon Codes” named top publication in information theory of prior two years by IEEE Information Theory Society
  • Alon Orlitsky awarded IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award" to recognize exceptional publications in the field and to stimulate interest in and encourage contributions to fields of interest of the Society"
  • Kickoff of $5 million DoD MURI project on space-time processing for tactical mobile ad-hoc networks, led by ECE Prof. James Zeidler
Top

2005

  • Jack Wolf named Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Massimo Franceschetti receives IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society S. A. Schelkunoff Best Paper award
  • Larry Milstein named first holder of the Ericsson Endowed Chair in Wireless Communication Access Techniques
  • Yuhwa Lo elected Fellow of Optical Society of America; Truong Nguyen elected Fellow of IEEE
  • Nuno Vasconcelos receives NSF CAREER Award
  • UCSD awarded $20 million from National Cancer Institute to establish Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence, led by ECE Prof. Sadik Esener
  • Alumnus Robert Pera (MS '02) founds Ubiquiti Networks
Top

2006

  • Pradeep K. Khosla and adjunct professor Roberto Padovani elected to National Academy of Engineering
  • Shaya Fainman shares George E. Brown Jr. Award with Alfred U’Ren of Mexico’s CICESE for collaboration on quantum computing
  • William Coles elected Fellow of American Physical Society
  • Yuhwa Lo and Alon Orlitsky elected Fellows of IEEE
  • Information Theory and Applications (ITA) Center inaugurated, with ECE Prof. Alon Orlitsky as founding director
  • IEEE Information Theory Society awards Best Paper to Alon Orlitsky and graduate students Narayana Prasad Santhanam (MS, PhD ’03,’06) and Junan Zhang (MS, PhD ’02,’05)
  • Alexander Vardy awarded Fulbright Scholarship
  • Massimo Franceschetti receives NSF Career Award
Top

2007

  • Peter Asbeck elected to National Academy of Engineering
  • Jack Wolf awarded Aaron Wyner Distinguished Service Award from IEEE Information Theory Society
  • Alon Orlitsky named inaugural Qualcomm Endowed Chair in Information Theory and its Applications; Paul Siegel named to CMRR Endowed Chair in Magnetic Recording
  • Bhaskar Rao, Rene Cruz and student Bongyong Song (PhD ’06) receive Stephen O. Rice Prize Paper Award in field of communication systems
  • Shayan Mookherjea awarded NSF CAREER Award
  • Larry Larson appointed ECE chair
  • Shadi Dayeh, a graduate student co-advised by Profs. Edward T. Yu and Deli Wang receives two paper awards from the Materials Research Society, and a Young Scientist Award from the AVS Physics and Chemistry of Semiconductor Surfaces and Interfaces
  • Stojan Radic and Paul Yu elected Fellows of Optical Society of America
  • Massimo Franceschetti receives Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award
  • Paul Siegel receives Best Paper Award from the IEEE Communications Society  Data Storage Technical  Committee
Top

2008

  • Paul Siegel elected to National Academy of Engineering
  • Adolf Lohmann receives the first Emmett N. Leith Medal
  • Pamela Cosman and Paul Yu elected Fellows of IEEE
  • Andrew Viterbi receives National Medal of Science from Pres. George W. Bush
  • Rene Cruz receives the S.O. Rice Paper Award from the IEEE Communication Theory Society and INFOCOM Achievement Award
  • Shaya Fainman named inaugural Cymer Endowed Chair in Advanced Optical Technologies; Bhaskar Rao named inaugural Ericsson Endowed Chair in Wireless Access Networks
  • Gert Lanckriet receives SIAM Optimization Prize, awarded by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics every third year to the authors of the most outstanding paper on a topic in optimization
  • CMRR celebrates 25th anniversary
  • Ian Galton receives the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems Darlington Best Paper Award (with A. Panigada)
  • Dan Sievenpiper receives the URSI Issac Koga Gold Medal
  • Larry Larson appointed ECE Chair
  • Young-Han Kim awarded NSF CAREER Award
Top

2009

  • Mohan Trivedi and Daniel Sievenpiper elected Fellows of IEEE; Joseph Ford elected Fellow of Optical Society of America
  • IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award honors adjunct professor Roberto Padovani for work on 3G CDMA cellular communications networks
  • Dan Sievenpiper receives the Piergiorgio L. E. Uslenghi Letters Prize Paper Award
  • Charles Tu accepts the Pan Wen-Yuan Foundation Outstanding Research Award, Taiwan
  • Gert Lanckriet awarded Hellman Fellowship
  • Young-Han Kim receives US-Israel Binational Science Foundation Bergmann Memorial Award
Top

2010

  • Ian Galton, Andrew Kahng and Ramesh Rao elected Fellows of IEEE
  • Jack Wolf elected to National Academy of Sciences; co-recipient of Marconi Society Prize with Irwin Jacobs
  • Patrick Mercier receives the Jack Kilby Award for Outstanding Student Paper at IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference
  • Massimo Franceschetti receives the IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award
  • Shaya Fainman receives best paper award, IEEE Sensors Journal
  • Gert Lanckriet receives IBM Faculty Award
  • Zhaowei Liu awarded Hellman Fellowship
Top

2011

  • Shaya Fainman appointed ECE chair
  • Charles Tu accepts the MBE Innovator Award, North American Molecular Beam Conference
  • Paul Yu named inaugural William S.C. Chang Endowed Chair in Electronic Devices and Materials
  • Gert Lanckriet named one of Top 35 Scientists under 35 by MIT Technology Review; receives NSF Career Award, Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and Yahoo! Faculty Research and Engagement Program Award
  • Gabriel Rebeiz and Dan Filipovic receive the IEEE Antennas and Propagation John D. Kraus Award for “an exceptional contribution to the field of antennas through innovation” for their 1993 paper on the analysis of antennas on dielectric lenses
Top

2012

  • Dennis Gabor Award honors Shaya Fainman; Optical Society of Awards cites Fainman among 50 most published authors in applied optics; Fainman lab demonstrates smallest room-temperature nanolaser to date
  • Gabriel Rebeiz appointed to Wireless Communications Industry Endowed Chair in Wireless Communication Technology; Andrew Kahng named to Chancellor’s Associates and CAP Endowed Chair in High-Performance Computing
  • Eric Fullerton awarded AIP Prize for Industrial Applications of Physics for work on magnetic recording media; Fullerton elected Fellow of IEEE
  • Yuan Taur receives the JJ Ebers Award for contributions to the advancement of several generations of CMOS process technologies
  • Paul Yu elected Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Information Theory Paper Award awarded to Young-Han Kim for “Feedback Capacity of Stationary Gaussian Channels”
  • Peter Asbeck receives the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society  Distinguished Educator Award
  • Shayan Mookherjea elected Fellow of Optical Society of America
Top

2013

  • Massimo Franceschetti receives IEEE Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize from IEEE Control Systems Society
  • Zhaowei Liu receives Young Investigator Awards from ONR and DARPA
  • Albert Pisano appointed Dean at School of Engineering
  • Kenneth Kreutz-Delgado elected Fellow of IEEE
  • Mohan Trivedi receives the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society Outstanding Research Award
  • Andrew Kahng named to ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference DAC 40 Club
  • Charles Tu accepts an Honorary Doctorate, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Alexander Vardy named inaugural Jack Keil Wolf Chair in Electrical Engineering
  • Nuno Vasconcelos and Gert Lanckriet receive Yahoo! Faculty Research and Engagement Program Award
Top

2014

  • Truong Nguyen appointed ECE chair
  • Gabriel Rebeiz honored with Daniel E. Noble Award for Emerging Technologies for pioneering work on RF MEMS; IEEE Microwave Prize; R&D 100 Award for Advanced Automobile Radars
  • IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal awarded to Adjunct Professor John Proakis
  • Sujit Dey elected Fellow of IEEE
  • Nuno Vasconcelos receives Yahoo! Faculty Research and Engagement Program Award
  • Charles Tu accepts IEEE Region 6 Outstanding Educator Award
  • Shadi Dayeh receives NSF CAREER Award; Drew Hall and Patrick Mercier awarded Hellman Fellowships
Top

2015

  • Emmett N. Leith Medal awarded to Shaya Fainman by Optical Society of America
  • Gabriel Rebeiz receives IEEE Antenna and Propagation Harold A. Wheller Applications Prize Paper Award and the Kuwait Prize for Engineering and Applied Science
  • Young-Han Kim elected Fellow of IEEE and honored with James Massey Research and Teaching Award for Young Scholars
  • Bhaskar Rao awarded Fulbright-Nokia Distinguished Chair in Information and Communication Technologies
  • Gert Lanckriet shares in ICML 10-Year Paper Award
  • Patrick Mercier receives Beckman Young Investigator Award; Boubacar Kante awarded Hellman Fellowship; Drew Hall receives NSF Career Award
Top

Course Plans & Forms

Course Plans

These plans are suggestions for when to take your major requirements and do not list any college or general education requirements. They take into consideration prerequisites and when classes are offered.

For alternate course plans, please contact the ECE Undergraduate Student Affairs Office through the VAC.

FRESHMEN PLANS

Electrical Engineering

Electives

Professional and Technical Electives are an integral part of the ECE major curriculum. They allow students course flexibility as well as the unique opportunity to tailor their major to their personal interests and professional goals. Generally, electives are upper division, 4 units and passed with a C- or better.

Keep in mind:

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