ECE Illinois Overview
Tom Moone
Communications Coordinator
August 2012
The University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign
“Here, my friends, on the prairies of Illinois and of the Middle West,
We can see a long way in all directions.
We look to east, to west, to north and south.
Our commerce, our ideas, come and go in all directions.
Here there are no barriers,
No defenses, to ideas or the spirit,
No rigid patterns of thought, and no iron conformity.”
-Adlai E. Stevenson II, Illinois Governor 1949-1953
The University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign
• Land-grant university
created by Morrill Act
• Founded in 1867
• Flagship institution
• 43,862 students
• 3,042 faculty
• 7,932 staff
Alma Mater
Numbers updated 7-11
Administration
• Robert Easter, President, University of Illinois
• Phyllis Wise, Vice President, University of Illinois, and
Chancellor, Urbana Campus
• Ilesanmi Adesida, Provost (and ECE professor)
• Michael Bragg, Interim Dean, College of Engineering
• Andreas Cangellaris, ECE Illinois Department Head
August 2012
“I view us as a quality of life engine. The source of
discovery translated into information, translated into
knowledge, and translated into applications that make
this world a better place for its citizens to live in. We
are a public university serving the public good through
learning, discovery, and engagement.”
-Chancellor Phyllis Wise
University of Illinois:
Research Powerhouse
• 22 Nobel Prizes and 20 Pulitzer Prizes (faculty/alumni)
• 478 active US patents
• Spends over $500 million for science and engineering
R&D (2009)
• Received more NSF funding than any other academic
institution from 1998 to 2003, and again in 2009
• Nationally, ranked 8th in PhDs awarded (2006) by Inside
Higher Ed
Numbers updated 7-11
University of Illinois:
How We Size Up
• 316 main campus buildings on 2.3 square miles
• 705 total campus buildings on 7.7 square miles
• Over 1,000 registered student organizations, coalitions,
honorary societies, and teams
• 425,000+ living alumni, one of the largest alumni
organizations in the nation
Numbers updated 7-11
World Connections
• The Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai
Jiao Tong University ranks Illinois 4th in their “Academic
Ranking of World Universities in
Engineering/Technology and Computer Science
2012”
• Ranked 9th nationally in number of students enrolled in
study abroad programs (2009)
• Ranked 2nd nationally for total number of
international students enrolled (2010)
• Home to PLATO and the first computer network; ranked
first among “top wired colleges” by PC Magazine
(2008)
Numbers updated 8-12
Engineering at Illinois
Twelve Distinguished
Departments
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Aerospace
Agricultural and Biological
Bioengineering
Chemical and Biomolecular
Civil and Environmental
Computer Science
Electrical and Computer
Industrial and Enterprise
Systems
• Materials Science and
Engineering
• Mechanical Science and
Engineering
• Nuclear, Plasma, and
Radiological
• Physics
College of Engineering Numbers
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Undergraduate students: 6,970
Graduate students: 2,711
Professors: 241
Associate professors: 77
Assistant professors: 86
BS degrees conferred: 1,089
MS degrees conferred: 475
PhD degrees conferred: 265
Numbers updated 7-11
Major Research Facilities
• Beckman Institute for
Advanced Science and
Technology
• Coordinated Science
Laboratory
• Micro and Nanotechnology
Laboratory
• Frederick Seitz Materials
Research Laboratory
• National Center for
Supercomputing Applications
Beckman Institute
Over 40 Interdisciplinary
Centers and Labs
• Advanced Transportation Research and Engineering Laboratory
• Center for Nanoscale Chemical-Electrical-Mechanical Manufacturing
Systems
• Center of Advanced Materials for Purification of Water with Systems
• Grainger Center for Electric Machinery and Electromechanics
• Information Trust Institute
• Mid-America Earthquake Center
• Power Systems Engineering Research Center
• Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing
• Technology Entrepreneur Center
• Center for the Simulation of Advanced Rockets
Grainger Engineering Library
Information Center
• Technologically advanced;
inspiring learning and discovery
environment
• Annually serves more than 1.5
million students, faculty, and
visitors
• Capacity for 350,000 volumes
• 1,100 journal subscriptions
• Conference and series
subscriptions
• High-end engineering workstations
Grainger Engineering Library
US News Rankings
• The undergraduate
engineering program ranks 6th
(2012)
• The graduate engineering
program ranks 5th (2013)
• Most of the college’s 12
departments are consistently
top-ranked
Numbers updated 6-12
Undergraduate Engineering
Specialties in 2012 Top Five
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Agricultural (2)
Civil (2)
Computer engineering (5)
Electrical/electronic/communications (5)
Engineering physics (2)
Environmental/environmental health (4)
Materials (3)
Graduate Engineering
Specialties in 2011 Top Five
• Biological / Agricultural (1)
• Civil (2)
• Computer engineering (4)
• Electrical/electronic (4)
• Environmental (3)
• Materials (2)
The Department of
Electrical and Computer
Engineering
Why Major in ECE?
Our faculty and students work to solve important problems
that affect society and our daily lives, including:
– Ensuring a reliable energy supply
– Enabling wireless communication
– Creating new devices and architectures that improve the speed
and power consumption of computers and handheld electronics
– Developing LED lighting and solar cells for energy efficiency
– Creating nanomaterials and lasers for sensing
– Cryptography, hardware verification, and information theory for
building trustworthy networks
– Inventing new imaging techniques that enable medical diagnoses
and early treatment
ECE ILLINOIS
• Electrical engineering program established in 1891
• Computer engineering added in 1972
• Annually ranked a top program:
- Undergraduate electrical engineering is ranked 5th and graduate
is ranked 4th by US News
- Undergraduate computer engineering is ranked 5th and graduate
computer engineering is ranked 4th by US News
• 20,085 alumni worldwide
• 3,688 alumni with more than one ECE Illinois degree
Numbers updated 7-11
ECE Faculty
• 106 faculty members
• Over 50% Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) fellows
• Seven American Physical Society (APS)
fellows
• Seven Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM) fellows
• 11 American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellows
• 18 members of the National Academy of
Engineering (NAE) (9 emeritus faculty)
• Highly decorated—National Medal of
Science, National Medal of Technology,
Japan Prize, Russian Energy Prize, IEEE
Medal of Honor
Bruce Hajek
Numbers updated 7-11
Well-Placed Alumni
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Prith Banerjee, chief technical officer, ABB
Todd Beanblossom, chief engineer, Boeing
Mark Bohr, senior fellow, Intel
Ralph Cicerone, president, National Academy of Science
Admiral Archie Clemins, commander in chief, US
Pacific Fleet (retired)
Martin Eberhard, founder, Tesla Motors
Rob Kennedy, co-president, C-SPAN
Brian Leung, founder, Bay Apparel
Jerry Sanders, founder, Advanced Micro Devices
Steve Sullivan, senior technology officer, Lucasfilm
Jack Sun, VP R&D, TSMC
Numbers updated 7-11
ECE Staff
• ECE staff includes 70
academic professionals
and hourly employees
• The average length of
tenure is nine years
ECE Undergraduate Students
• Total students: 1,736
• Computer engineering (CompE)
majors: 608
• Electrical engineering (EE) majors:
1,128
• CompE and EE incoming freshmen
average ACT score: 31.30
• CompE and EE incoming freshmen
average high school rank: 88.99
• Number bachelor’s degrees conferred,
2010-2011: 264
Numbers updated 8-12
ECE Graduate Student
• Total students: 476
• For 2010-2011:
– 86 master’s degrees
conferred
– 72 PhD degrees
conferred
Numbers updated 8-12
Educating Tomorrow’s
Engineers
• Students learn from faculty experts in their fields.
• 30 department undergraduate labs ensure hands-on
component.
• Senior Design or Advanced Digital Projects Laboratory
classes allow undergrads to initiate unique projects.
• Students prepared for leadership roles in increasingly
global environment.
ECE 110
• As freshmen, all ECE students take ECE 110: Exploring
Digital Information Technology, an introductory course
that provides an overview of the discipline.
ECE 444
• Students in ECE 444: Theory and Fabrication -of
Integrated Circuit Devices spend time working in the
yellow glow of the “Fab Lab.”
ECE 498: Programming
Massively Parallel Processors
• As parallel processors become more prevalent, need for
experts will grow.
• Development of ECE 498 was unique collaboration
between:
– David Kirk, NVIDIA chief scientist
– Wen-mei Hwu, AMD Jerry Sanders Chair of Electrical and
Computer Engineering
• ECE Illinois and NVIDIA will share blueprint of ECE 498
with numerous peer institutions.
Why Hire ECE Students?
• Students study and collaborate with faculty who are
experts in their areas. They also interact with fellow
students who are outstanding and diverse.
• Students receive a hands-on education, spending a
great deal of time in the department’s many
laboratories.
• Most students leave Illinois prepared for life in the
real world, having survived at least four years on a
large campus offering many distractions, challenges,
and opportunities. Students are mature, well-rounded,
and ambitious.
Student Recruitment:
Interviews
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Interviews scheduled: 846
Companies recruiting ECE students: 507
Average interviews for BS students: 4.4
Average interviews for MS students: 6.5
Average offers for BS students: 3.0
Average offers for MS students: 2.0
From ECS, 2010-2011
Student Recruitment: Salary
Average starting salary for:
• Bachelor’s CompE: $69,875
• Bachelor’s EE: $66,290
• Master’s: $78,083
Signing bonus:
• CompE: 34% receive; average is $5,844 (BS)
• EE: 26% receive; average is $10,806 (all levels)
From ECS, 2010-2011
Research Areas
• Biomedical Imaging,
Bioengineering, and
Acoustics
• Communications
• Computer Engineering
• Electromagnetic Fields
• Integrated Circuits and
Systems
• Physical Electronics
• Power and Energy
Systems
• Quantum Electronics
• Remote Sensing and
Wave Propagation
• Signal Processing
• Systems and Control
Transistor Laser
• Transistor laser invented by Nick
Holonyak and Milton Feng
• Uses a quantum well and a
resonator in base to control
electron-hole recombination and
electrical gain
• Can switch between a normal
transistor and a transistor laser
• Combines functionality of a laser
and a transistor
• Progressing towards developing
transistor lasers that operate at
different speeds for a variety of
commercial applications
Milton Feng and Nick Holonyak
Tissue Imaging Technique
• Stephen Boppart led a team of
researchers, demonstrated the novel
microscopy technique nonlinear
interferometric vibrational imaging
(NIVI).
• This technique produces easy-toread, color-coded images of tissue,
outlining clear tumor boundaries in a
very short amount of time.
• NIVI assesses and constructs images
based on molecular composition,
allowing quick differentiation
between tumors and healthy tissue.
Stephen Boppart
Self-cooling Observed in
Graphene Electronics
• Eric Pop is a part of an Illinois
research team that has found
graphene transistors to have a
nanoscale cooling effect that
reduces their temperature.
• Current computers use fans to cool
the transistors, which consumes
much of the energy needed for the
device.
• Graphene-based electronics could
require little or no cooling, making
graphene an attractive replacement
for silicon.
Eric Pop
Detecting Tsunami Airglow
• Jonathan Makela and his team
were the first to record an airglow
signature in the upper atmosphere
produced by a tsunami.
• The signature, caused by the
March 11 earthquake that
devastated Japan, preceded the
tsunami by one hour.
• Makela believes the camera
systems used to record this
tsunami could be an aid in creating
a tsunami early warning system.
Jonathan Makela
Faculty Lead: Education,
Research, and Scholarship
• With over 100 members, the ECE faculty has an unparalleled
breadth and depth of expertise.
• ECE faculty are hard-working, innovative, and collegial, yet
competitive.
• Interdisciplinary projects can utilize Illinois’ structure of
collaboration and access to faculty from other top-ranked
engineering disciplines.
• ECE faculty are respected by peers, serving as editors for countless
publications and receiving frequent awards and honors.
• Industry leaders like Microsoft, Google, Micron, NVIDIA, IBM, Intel,
Motorola, Samsung, Toyota, Texas Instruments, AMD, and Boeing
among research partners.
The ECE Illinois Legacy
SOUND ON FILM
On June 9, 1922, Professor Joseph T. Tykociner gave the firstever demonstration of sound on film. Tykociner produced a
variable-density sound track along one side of the film that
records the picture images, thereby ensuring that pictures and
sound would be synchronized.
ULTRASOUND
Professor William Fry founded the Bioacoustics Laboratory in
1946 and began conducting pioneering research in the use of
ultrasound as a noninvasive surgical tool and a visualization
tool for diagnostics, work which contributed to today’s
ultrasound imaging tools.
TRANSISTOR
In December 1947, while working at Bell Labs, John
Bardeen and colleagues William Shockley and Walter
Brattain ushered in the era of solid state electronics with
their invention of the transistor, earning them the 1956
Nobel Prize in physics. Bardeen served on the ECE faculty
from 1951 to 1991.
INTEGRATED CIRCUIT
While working at Texas Instruments in 1958, alumnus Jack
Kilby figured out how to interconnect huge numbers of
discrete components economically and reliably by creating the
integrated circuit. He received the Nobel Prize in physics in
2000 for his invention.
LIGHT-EMITTING DIODE
While working at General Electric in 1962, alumnus Nick
Holonyak developed the first practical, visible spectrum lightemitting diode, changing information display and illumination
forever. Holonyak has been an ECE faculty member since 1963.
FLAT-PANEL PLASMA DISPLAY
Professors Donald Bitzer and Gene Slottow (both of whom
are also alumni) along with student Robert Willson invented
the plasma display panel in 1964. They received an Emmy
Award for their work in 2002.