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Welcome to the Electrical Engineering Department at UCR. We have 21 core faculty members overseeing large research programs that give many opportunities to both graduate and undergraduate students to participate in research. There are many fellowships, research assistantships, and teaching assistantships available for graduate students, and there are funded research positions for undergraduates. Electrical Engineering Overview Electrical engineers are everywhere. We live in the information and computing age that is the creation of electrical engineers (EEs). EEs invent, design, build, and test the processors, hard drives, memory, integrated circuits, and printed circuit boards that make up your computer. They design, build, and test your iPod, cell phone, the cell-phone tower, and the entire communication network. They built and they maintain the internet. Electrical engineers work in areas of controls, robotics, communications, signal processing, intelligent systems, computers, circuits, electronic devices and materials. They work in bio-engineering designing biological molecular detectors and using nanoparticles to hunt down and destroy cancer cells. Electrical engineers are essential to modern medicine. Consider all of the electronic equipment that you see in a modern hospital ranging in size and complexity from the blood-oxygen sensor that goes over your finger to the several million dollar MRI scanner. This equipment is the product of electrical engineering. The primary professional society of electrical engineers is the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) which has more than 365,000 members and is the largest of all the engineering societies. More information can be found here. UCR’s Undergraduate Program
The undergraduate program in Electrical Engineering at UCR offers a broad education in all of the areas mentioned above. One of the distinctions of the UCR EE undergraduate program is that every course is accompanied by a hands-on laboratory component so that the theory taught in the classroom is immediately applied in the lab. Our low student-faculty ratio of 17 gives a personal feel to the department. Freshman engineering students reside in the engineering dorm which provides them with both a social and academic support network. We have an active student chapter of the IEEE which hosts industry, academic, and alumni speakers, and participates in community outreach. I encourage new undergraduates to join. The large research programs of the EE faculty offer many funded opportunities for undergraduate students to participate in research. Research experience can distinguish your resume from the others. Several faculty members have NSF programs to bring groups of undergraduates to China during the summer for research at Chinese universities, travel, and sightseeing. During the last 2 quarters of the senior year, undergraduates participate in a senior design project where projects have included sumo-robots, self-guided vehicles, and carbon nanotube solar cells.
The focus of the graduate program is research. There are large efforts in 5 areas. (1) Nanoscale materials and devices for electronic, sensing, biological, and power applications. These efforts are supported by a shared class 100 clean room for fabrication. All faculty members who work in this area are also members of the interdisciplinary Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering. (2) Integrated Circuits and VLSI System Design. Faculty members in the area focus on analog/radio-frequency (RF) and digital circuit designs, computer-aided design (CAD) techniques for VLSI systems, design methodology for current and future nanometer integrated systems (3) Communications and Signal Processing includes optical fiber based networks, wireless networks, and large-scale sensor networks. The research issues range from information theory and coding to computing and optimization algorithms and to networking protocol designs and implementations. (4) Controls and Robotics, and (5) Intelligent Systems. We have a very social graduate student council that throws regular end-of-quarter parties for our graduate students. Our graduate students become well-traveled attending conferences in cities across the country including Hawaii and occasionally even Europe and Asia to present their research results. Our students have won many best paper awards at these conferences. They regularly obtain summer internships in major research labs such as Lawrence Livermore National Lab, I.B.M. T. J. Watson Lab, Intel, and QUALCOM, and when they graduate, the receive jobs in industry, government, and academia. Campus Life and Local Attractions The campus and surrounding area has much to offer. Enjoy lunch and relaxation in the botanic gardens. Hike the many trails through the mountains behind campus. On campus, visit the new student commons and its many dining facilities. Attend student plays and music concerts. Participate in intramural sports, and be sure to take advantage of the updated recreation center with its weight room, cardio machines, track, squash, tennis courts and many alternative workshops including yoga, step Class, Bosu, Salsa, and Hip Hop Dancing. Enjoy the annual homecoming week-long party and concert and the spring splash event. Los Angeles is one hour to the west with its many attractions such as Disneyland, Six Flags Magic Mountain, Knotts Berry Farms, and Universal Studios; and its famous beaches such as Venice, Santa Monica, and Manhattan Beach. The Orange County beaches, Huntington Beach, Newport, Laguna, and Dana Point are one hour southwest of Riverside. Skiing at Mt. High, Snow Valley, Snow Summit and Big Bear is one hour to the north in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains. The wineries of Temecula are 30 minutes to the south. The desert resort of Palm Springs is 1 hour to the east. A popular long-weekend get-a-way is Las Vegas 3 hours to the northeast. All of the Southern California experience is readily accessible from Riverside. For those of you who are finishing high school, are good at math, and are wondering which direction to go, I suggest considering electrical engineering. You will get to design and build real systems, such as robots, sensor systems, computer chips, or next-generation solar cells. For those of you finishing your undergraduate degree, I suggest graduate school to pursue in depth study and research in the area of your choice. I emphasize that because of the large research funding in engineering, most graduate students have all of their fees and tuition covered, and they also receive a monthly salary.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me, any of the EE faculty, or our knowledgeable staff. Contact information can be found here. Sincerely, Roger Lake Professor and Chair
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