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Program Information

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Detailed Information

Programs of Study

The Department offers programs leading to the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering. Research areas include communications systems, control systems, signal and image processing, solid-state nanoelectronics, microwave electronics, optoelectronic materials and devices, and ultrahigh-speed and microwave-integrated circuits. A research M.S. degree requires a total of 30 credit hours beyond the B.S., with at least 6 credit hours coming from thesis research. A research M.S. also requires the completion and defense of an M.S. thesis. A nonresearch M.S. degree requires 30 course credit hours of course work. All students must take a qualifying examination at the end of their second semester of graduate study; successful completion of the exam is required to receive an M.S. degree and to continue to the Ph.D. program. Doctoral students must accumulate a minimum of 36 course credits beyond the B.S. degree, pass the qualifying and candidacy examinations at the Ph.D. level, spend at least two years in resident study, and write and defend a Ph.D. dissertation.

Research Facilities

There are several major research laboratories in the Department to support the study of electronic and photonic materials and devices and the analysis and design of communication systems, control systems, and signal and image processing algorithms.

The Nanofabrication Facility allows fabrication of ICs and devices with geometries as small as 6 nm. The 3600-square-foot clean room contains a photomask generator, contact mask aligners, a wafer stepper, an Elionix electron-beam lithography system, eight furnace tubes, a plasma etcher, PECVD, APCVD, LPCVD, RIE, ICP Deep RIE, five evaporators, and two sputtering systems. Inspection systems include ISI and Elionix SEMs, Hitachi FESEM, a prism coupler, an interferometer, an ellipsometer, a variable-angle spectroscopic ellipsometer, two surface profilers, a four-point probe, and two Zeiss optical microscopes. A 75-kV electron-beam lithography system is available for nanolithography. Postprocessing equipment includes a wafer-dicing saw and two wire bonders. Advanced measurement facilities include low-temperature equipment such as a 3He cryostat capable of 300 mK and magnetic fields of 11T and a dilution refrigerator capable of 10mK, with fields up to 11T. A UHV-STM with atomic resolution is available for sample characterizations, along with two AFMs.

The High-Speed Circuits and Devices Laboratory houses a state-of-the-art microwave and high-speed digital device and circuits characterization facility. Full on-wafer testing capability, including analog characterization to 50 GHz and digital testing to 12.5 Gb/s, allow for comprehensive characterization of both analog and digital high-speed microelectronic circuits. In addition, facilities for high-speed optoelectronic characterization of detectors and photoreceiver subsystems for fiber-optic telecommunications are available. State-of-the-art microwave CAD, data collection, and data analysis facilities are also in place for rapid circuit design and characterization.

The Semiconductor Optics Lab includes a 15-watt Argon-ion laser, a tunable, mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser delivering femtosecond pulses, an He-Cd laser, and He cryostats with high spatial resolution and magnetic fields up to 12 Tesla.

The Laboratory for Image and Signal Analysis (LISA) features state-of-the-art workstations for the development and analysis of digital signal, image, and video processing algorithms; equipment for the acquisition, processing, and real-time display of HDTV sequences; cameras; frame grabbers; a flat-bed scanner; several high-definition, 24-bit color monitors; and specialized printers.

The Control Systems Research Laboratory contains several workstations networked to a set of dSpace miniboxes (microcontrollers) and a network of personal computers (PCs) running QNX (a real-time version of UNIX). The Communication Systems Research Laboratory and the Wireless At Notre Dame (WAND) Lab have a full complement of RF measurement equipment, wide-band digitizers, and connections to roof antennas as well as a full complement of supporting workstations.

The Department has its own electronics shop run by a full-time technician, and the solid-state laboratories are overseen by a full-time professional specialist and two full-time technicians. Another full-time professional specialist manages the Department’s undergraduate laboratories.

Financial Aid

Several prestigious fellowships are available to highly qualified first-time applicants, women, and students from groups that are underrepresented in engineering. Also available are about twenty-five teaching assistantships and several research assistantships that provide stipends of at least $1900 per month. All appointments include full remission of academic-year tuition.

Cost of Study

Tuition for graduate students was $18,120 per semester for full-time study in 2008–09. Tuition is waived for fellowship and assistantship recipients.

Living and Housing Costs

Two large modern apartment complexes are available on campus for single graduate students. Married student housing and apartments adjacent to the campus in South Bend are also available, renting for $470 to $600 per month. The cost of living is below the national average. More information is available at http://www.nd.edu/~orlh.

Student Group

The Department has 80 undergraduates and 100 graduate students. It awards about fifteen M.S. degrees and fifteen Ph.D. degrees per year.

Location

The University is the cultural center of the northern Indiana–southwestern Michigan area and offers extensive cultural, social, and sports events throughout the year. Its 2,150-acre campus is just north of South Bend, a city of about 130,000 people, and approximately 90 miles east of Chicago (a 2-hour trip by car or train). South Bend’s Morris Civic Auditorium hosts performances of Broadway plays and is the home of a first-rate symphony orchestra.

The University and The College

The University was founded in 1842 by the Reverend Edward Frederick Sorin and 6 brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross. It was chartered as a university in 1844, and engineering studies were begun in 1873. The campus’s twin lakes and many wooded areas provide a setting of natural beauty for more than 102 University buildings. The engineering buildings, Cushing and Fitzpatrick Halls, were erected in 1931 and 1979, respectively, and a new building, Stinson-Remick Hall, is scheduled for completion in 2009.

Applying

GRE General Test scores, TOEFL scores for international students, two transcripts showing academic credits and degrees, and letters of recommendation from 3 or 4 college faculty members are required. The application process is carried out online, starting at the Web site http://graduateschool.nd.edu. The GRE should be taken no later than January preceding the academic year of enrollment, particularly if financial aid is desired. The application deadline is January 15 for fall admission and November 1 for spring. The application fee for fall admission is $35 for applications submitted by December 1 and $50 for applications submitted after this date.

The Faculty and Their Research

• Panos J. Antsaklis, H. C. and E. A. Brosey Professor of Electrical Engineering; Ph.D., Brown, 1977. Distributed sensor/actuator networks, network congestion control, networked control systems, system theory, digital signal processing, stability theory, multidimensional systems.
• Peter H. Bauer, Professor; Ph.D., Miami (Florida), 1988. Digital filters, multidimensional systems and filtering, robust stability.
• Gary H. Bernstein, Professor; Ph.D., Arizona State, 1987. Nanostructure fabrication, electron beam lithography, high-speed circuits.
• William B. Berry, Professor Emeritus; Ph.D., Purdue, 1964. Solid-state energy conversion, thermoelectrics, photovoltaics.
• Kevin W. Bowyer, Concurrent Professor; Ph.D., Duke, 1980. Computer vision and image processing, pattern recognition, medical image analysis.
• Jay B. Brockman, Concurrent Associate Professor; Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon, 1992. Computer architecture, VLSI, processing-in-memory architecture, multidisciplinary design methodologies.
• Oliver O. Collins, Professor; Ph.D., Caltech, 1989. Information theory, coding, communications, deep space and satellite communication.
• Daniel J. Costello, Leonard Bettex Professor of Electrical Engineering; Ph.D., Notre Dame, 1969. Information theory, channel coding, digital communications, wireless communications.
• Patrick J. Fay, Professor; Ph.D., Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1996. Microwave device characterization; monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) and optoelectronic integrated circuit (OEIC) design, fabrication, and characterization; device technologies for ultrahigh-speed digital circuits.
• Thomas E. Fuja, Professor and Chair; Ph.D., Cornell, 1987. Digital communications, error control coding, joint source-channel coding, information theory.
• Martin Haenggi, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 1999. Wireless communications and networks, nonlinear dynamics.
• Douglas C. Hall, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1991. Optoelectronics device characterization, fabrication, semi-conductor lasers, materials studies.
• Yih-Fang Huang, Professor; Ph.D., Princeton, 1982. Statistical signal processing and communications image source coding, adaptive systems, neural networks.
• Debdeep Jena, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., California, Santa Barbara, 2003. Semiconductor growth, physics and device applications, epitaxial nanostructures, charge, heat and spin transport.
• Thomas H. Kosel, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Berkeley, 1975. Wear, erosion, electron microscopy, abrasion, tribology, crystal defects.
• J. Nicholas Laneman, Associate Professor; Ph.D., MIT, 2002. Multiuser and wireless communications, signal processing, information theory.
• Michael D. Lemmon, Professor; Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon, 1990. Real-time embedded control systems, networked control systems, sensor networks, mathematical systems theory.
• Craig S. Lent, Frank M. Freimann Professor of Electrical Engineering; Ph.D., Minnesota, 1984. Solid-state physics and devices, quantum transport, quantum cellular automata.
• Christine M. Maziar, Professor, Vice President, and Associate Provost of the University; Ph.D., Purdue, 1986. Device modeling and simulation for transport in ultrasmall semiconductor materials and structures.
• James L. Merz, Frank M. Freimann Professor of Electrical Engineering; Ph.D., Harvard, 1967. Optical properties of nanostructures; quantum wells, wires and dots; optoelectronic materials.
• Anthony N. Michel, Frank M. Freimann Professor of Electrical Engineering (Emeritus); Ph.D., Marquette, 1968; D.Sc., Graz (Austria), 1973. Circuit and system theory, large-scale systems.
• Alexander Mintairov, Research Professor; Ph.D., Ioffe (Russia), 1987. Nanophotonics and nanoplasmonics, near-field optical spectroscopy, solid-state optoelectronic devices and materials, physics of nanostructures.
• Alexei Orlov, Research Professor; Ph.D., Russian Academy of Science (Moscow), 1990. Design fabrication and testing on nanoelectronic and cryoelectronic devices.
• Wolfgang Porod, Frank M. Freimann Professor of Electrical Engineering; Ph.D., Graz (Austria), 1981. Solid-state devices, computational electronics, nanoelectronics.
• Thomas G. Pratt, Research Associate Professor; Ph.D., Georgia Tech, 1999. Communications and signal processing.
• Michael K. Sain, Frank M. Freimann Professor of Electrical Engineering; Ph.D., Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1965. Circuits, dynamics, systems, control, identification, courts, engines, inlets, structures, networks.
• Ken D. Sauer, Associate Professor and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies; Ph.D., Princeton, 1989. Tomographic imaging, multivariate detection and estimation, image compression.
• R. Michael Schafer, Professional Specialist; Ph.D., Notre Dame, 1980 (1996). Data networks, quality of service in data networks, multiprotocol label switching (MPLS).
• Alan C. Seabaugh, Professor; Ph.D., Virginia, 1985. High-speed devices and circuits, nanoelectronics, nanofabrication, electromechanical devices, bioagent detection.
• Gregory L. Snider, Professor and Associate Chair for Graduate Studies; Ph.D., California, Santa Barbara, 1991. Design and fabrication of nanoelectronic devices.
• Robert L. Stevenson, Professor; Ph.D., Purdue, 1990. Statistical and multidimensional signal and image processing, computer vision.
• Grace Xing, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., California, Santa Barbara, 2003. Semiconductor growth, physics, processing and devices, nanostructures and nanotechnologies.
• RESEARCH AREAS
• Electronic Circuits and Systems. Approximately half of the faculty members have research interests in this area, which includes communications, systems and control, and signal and image processing. Ongoing projects include work in these areas: communications (sensor networks, graph-based channel coding and iterative decoding, software radio, network analysis via random graphs, capacity-approaching performance on fading channels, cooperative communications, and novel transceiver architectures), systems and control (networked control systems, design and scaling of cyber-physical systems, statistical control, and supervisory control of hybrid systems), and signal and image processing (tomographic image reconstruction, restoration, and enhancement, detection, and estimation and their applications).
• Electronic Materials and Devices. The other half of the faculty members have research interests in the area that includes solid-state, nanoelectronic, and optoelectronic materials and devices. Ongoing projects include work in these areas: materials and nanostructures (Si/Ge, III-V, and II-VI semiconductors, including nitride-based semiconductors; complex oxides; molecular beam epitaxy; nanomagnetics; nanowires and tubes; quantum dots; molecular and magnetic quantum-dot cellular automata; and grapheme), nanoelectronics and energy-efficient electronics (quantum devices, quantum-dot cellular automata, silicon-based single-electron devices, and integrated CMOS and nanoelectronics), photonics and optoelectronics (semiconductor lasers; photonic integration; photodetectors, ranging from the IR to the UV; Er-doped waveguide amplifiers; and high-speed optoelectronics), nanobioelectronics (nanofabrication and sensor technologies, cell-semiconductor communication, and fluidics), advanced electronics (high-performance compound-semiconductor electronic devices, microwave/millimeter-wave integrated circuit (MMIC) design and fabrication, millimeter-wave detectors and imaging, wafer bonding, and advanced packaging and interconnects), and energy harvesting (thermal and photovoltaic energy converters, acoustic and rf energy extraction technology, and autonomous micro/nanosystems).

Correspondence and Information

University of Notre Dame
Graduate Admissions
Department of Electrical Engineering
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556-5637
Telephone: 574-631-8264
Email: eegrad@nd.edu