Departmental Information
ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING (ECE)
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering and
Mines offers the degrees of Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, in Computer
Engineering, and in Optical Engineering, and Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy
with a major in electrical engineering.
All three of the undergraduate curricula have the goal of educating immediately
productive engineers who are also qualified to pursue further education as necessary to
keep pace with these rapidly changing areas. The electrical engineering program prepares
students for careers in such areas as electronics, microelectronics, communications,
controls, electromagnetics, and signal processing. The computer engineering program
prepares students for computer-related careers including microcomputer-based design,
computer-aided VLSI design, computer networks, and artificial intelligence applications.
The optical engineering program, offered in cooperation with the Optical Sciences Center,
supports careers in areas involving optical design, optical fabrication and testing,
lasers, optical detectors, optical instrumentation, optical fiber communications, etc.
The department participates in the honors program.
The computer engineering program prepares students to work in the dynamic
and rapidly expanding field of digital technology. Computer engineers design computers and
computer systems, apply computers as components of larger systems, and apply digital
techniques to solving a broad range of engineering problems. The curriculum includes a
strong electrical engineering component, consisting of most of the required courses in the
electrical engineering curriculum. To this base it adds extensive course work in both the
hardware and software aspects of computers and digital systems. The program is
strengthened by the availability of extensive laboratory and computing facilities.
The presence in the department of the Computer Engineering Research Laboratory, the
Computer-Aided Design Laboratory, the Digital Image Analysis Laboratory, and the
Computer-Aided Engineering Center, as well as research in artificial intelligence and
expert systems, computer communications, computer networking, simulation, and other
specialties, maintains a modern viewpoint in the undergraduate curriculum.
The presence in the department of the Computer Engineering
Research Laboratory, the Computer-Aided Design Laboratory, the Electromagnetics
Laboratory, the Microelectronics Laboratory, the Center for Microcontamination Control,
and the SEMATECH Center of Excellence, as well as research in lasers, micro electronics,
pattern recognition and image processing, simulation, artificial intelligence, optical
communications, robotics, and other specialties, maintains a modern viewpoint in the
undergraduate program.