Overview
California Can Be Uniquely Entertaining but UCSC Graduate Degree in Electrical Engineering is Seriously Scientific
California takes its fair share of good-natured ribbing, mainly because its sublime weather, miles of gorgeous beaches, high-profile Hollywood industry, and endless quantity of beautiful people make it seem less serious. The fact is, though it is indeed a wonderful place to be, California is a state that gets down to business. California has more Nobel Award winners from its colleges and universities than most entire countries. It is the fifth-largest supplier of food and agriculture commodities on the planet. It has the biggest port in the United States. And if California were measured as an independent country, it would have the eighth largest economy in the world. The continuing influx of students to its institutions of higher learning, including UCSC, augurs well for the future.
Many graduate degree recipients of California universities and colleges make the state their new home after graduation. Indeed, even before leaving school many graduate students are contributing creative new ideas and many hours of hard work in university-level research conducted in partnership with governmental agencies and private firms. The creative cauldron of school, industry, and public/private partnerships continues to bring leading-edge thinking and creativity to California, and a variety of venture capital firms stand ready to fund promising research and development in many facets of computer science, engineering, and other studies on the leading edge of many industries and specialties. With the interaction among these various researchers, institutions, companies, and agencies, great economies of scale can be achieved relative to R&D on the most important technologies for the future of California, the nation, and the world.
The many areas of scientific research being pursued in California will have payoffs whose effects will be felt all around the planet. In fact, many research efforts in environmental science, ecology, biology, climatology, and natural sciences are benefiting from the advances in computation, computing, and engineering that are pouring forth from the many leading institutions of learning that are located in California. From the UC system to the many private colleges and universities, there are literally thousands of students, researchers, faculty, and staff scientists working on the major challenges of our times. A graduate student at UCSC is, indeed, at the very center of this high-tech, enterprising state of California, where the state is leveraging schools, industry, citizens, and government in common efforts to improve our understanding, and the quality, of life on earth.
Electrical Engineering Program Leverages Study, Lab Time, and Leading-Edge Research to Create Productive Degree Holders
The Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) at UCSC offers MS and PhD degree programs. The faculty members are involved in a wide range of research into photonics and electronics, including VLSI; electronic and optoelectronic materials; and systems for information transmission, storage, processing, and display. Information display research is especially exciting in the field of optical fiber communications, although many levels of research efforts continue in such other areas as wireless and optical communications, coding, digital signal processing, and audio/video signal processing. Additional efforts to understand electromagnetism, remote sensing, numerical electromagnetics, wave propagation, packaging, scattering radar oceanography, and microwave remote sensing are continuous and productive. Future areas of research will likely include both MEMS and nanotechnology.
EE department faculty members enjoy exceptionally close relationships with counterparts in the Departments of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Chemistry, Physics, Computer Science, Computational Biology, Computer Engineering, and Astronomy. Faculty members have both research and teaching duties, with responsibilities and expectations both inside and outside their own departments. EE faculty members also have ties to nearby industry, often inviting electrical engineering professionals to serve as visiting faculty members and arranging for graduate students to gain practical research experience by working at industrial labs and research facilities. The many relationships among educators, researchers, and graduate students create an environment conducive to collaboration and unexpected discoveries across a wide range of EE fields.
The research facilities at UCSC support inquiries into electronics and photonics that emphasize novel but practical devices that have applications in high-speed communication systems, microscale/nanoscale sensors, and fiber optics networks. Examples of some leading projects developed at on-campus research facilities include heating and cooling of microscale and nanoscale devices, high speed semiconductor lasers, WDM system components, liquid crystal displays (LCDs), optical storage, and new kinds of fiber optics networks. Research facilities include a 600-square-foot clean room (class-10k) for classroom use, as well as processing semiconductor devices under four class-100 exhaust fume hoods (laminar flow). There is also a 1,200-square-foot laboratory for characterization and testing, as well as 1,500-square-foot teaching labs for Properties of Materials, Electromagnetism, Optics, and High-Speed Electronics. The combination of mentoring, research, and independent study leads to the development of researchers, industry scientists, and the next generation of motivated faculty.
