ECE Illinois OverviewBrad PetersenAssistant Director of CommunicationsFall 2007

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 Illinoisat Urbana-Champaign

• Land-grant university created by Morrill Act

• Founded in 1867• Flagship institution• 41,342 students*• 2,083 faculty*• 7,155 staff* Alma Mater

* As of 9-07

Administration

• Joseph B. White, President, University of Illinois• Richard Herman, Chancellor, Urbana Campus• Linda Katehi, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic

Affairs, Urbana Campus (an ECE professor)• Ilesanmi Adesida, College of Engineering Dean (an

ECE professor)• Richard E. Blahut, ECE Illinois Department Head

“This university has many faces: a superb undergraduate institution for exceptionally talented students;

a research powerhouse that produces breathtaking discoveries

and advances in knowledge; one of the world's leading training grounds

for the next generation of scientists, professors, and policy makers;

and, a force shaping the possibilities of the future across the domains of human endeavor.”

-Chancellor Richard Herman

University of Illinois:Research Powerhouse*

• 21 Nobel Prizes and 20 Pulitzer Prizes (faculty/alumni) • 359 active US patents• Spends more than $500 million for science and

engineering R&D (2004)• Received more NSF funding than any other academic

institution each year from 1998 to 2003, second most in 2004

• Nationally, ranked 8th in PhDs awarded (2006)

* As of 6-07

University of Illinois:How We Size Up *

• 272 main campus buildings on 2.3 square miles

• 562 total campus buildings on 7.5 square miles

• Over 1,000 registered student organizations, coalitions, honorary societies, and teams

• One of the largest alumni organizations in the nation with nearly 140,000 members

* As of 6-07

We’ve Got World Connections:

• The Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranks us 25th in their “2006Top 500 World Universities”

• Ranked 9th nationally in number of students enrolled in study abroad programs

• Ranked 6th nationally for total number of international students enrolled

• Home to PLATO and the first computer network; ranked 6th “most connected, plugged-in, and high-tech campuses in the country” by PC Magazine (2006)

Engineering at Illinois

12 Distinguished Departments• 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*• Undergraduate students: 5,010• Graduate students: 2,307• Professors: 208• Associate professors: 73• Assistant professors: 92• BS degrees conferred: 1,108• MS degrees conferred: 535• PhD degrees conferred: 232

* As of 6-07

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 ApplicationsBeckman Institute

Over 40 Interdisciplinary/ Multidisciplinary Centers and Laboratories

• Center of Advanced Materials for Purification of Water with Systems

• Advanced Transportation Research and Engineering Laboratory

• Information Trust Institute

• Mid-America Earthquake Center

• Center for Nanoscale Chemical-Electrical-Mechanical

Manufacturing Systems

• 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

• Serves more than 1.5 million students, faculty, and visitors each year

• 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 4th (2007)

• The graduate engineering program ranks 5th (2008)

• Most of the college’s 12 departments are consistently top-ranked

Undergraduate Engineering Specialties In 2008 Top Five

• Agricultural (1)• Civil (1)• Computer engineering (5)• Electrical/electronic/communications (4)• Engineering physics (3)• Environmental/environmental health (3)• Materials (5)• Mechanical (5)• Nuclear (4)

Graduate Engineering Specialties In 2008 Top Five

• Civil (2)

• Computer engineering (4)

• Computer science (5)

• Electrical/electronic (4)

• Environmental (2)

• Materials (2)

• Physics—condensed matter/low temperature (1)

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

ECE Illinois

• Electrical engineering program established in 1891• Computer engineering added in 1972• Annually ranked a top program:

- Undergraduate and graduate electrical engineering are ranked 4th by US News

- Undergraduate computer engineering is ranked 5th and graduate computer engineering is ranked 4th by US News

• 20,000 alumni worldwide

ECE Faculty• 100+ 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• 10 American Association for the

Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellows• Nine members of the National Academy of

Engineering (NAE)• Highly decorated—National Medal of

Science, National Medal of Technology, Japan Prize, Russian Energy Prize, IEEE Medal of Honor

Bruce Hajek

Depth and Breadth

Well-Placed Alumni• Prith Banerjee, senior VP, HP• 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 and CEO, Tesla Motors• Rob Kennedy, co-CEO, C-SPAN• Brian Leung, founder, Bay Apparel • Dirk Meyer, president and COO, Advanced Micro Devices• Steve Sample, president, USC• Jerry Sanders, founder, Advanced Micro Devices• Steve Sullivan, director of R & D, Industrial Light & Magic• Jack Sun, director of logic technology division, TSMC

Alumni Distribution

Staff

• ECE staff includes 70 academic professionals and hourly employees.

• The average length of tenure is 9 years.

ECE Undergraduate Students*• Total students: 1,275 • Computer engineering (CE) majors: 477• Electrical engineering (EE) majors: 798 • CE incoming freshmen

average ACT score: 30.8 • EE incoming freshmen

average ACT score: 30.9 • CE incoming freshmen average

high school rank: 89 • EE incoming freshmen average

high school rank: 89• For 2005-06 academic year:

- 127 CE degrees conferred - 215 EE degrees conferred * As of 9-07

ECE Graduate Students

• Total students: 560 • For 2005-2006:

– 125 Master’s degrees conferred

– 53 PhD degrees conferred

* As of 9-07

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, 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*

• Interviews scheduled: 1,443• Companies interviewing on campus: 394• Companies recruiting ECE students: 542• Average interviews for BS students: 12• Average interviews for MS students: 10• Average offers for BS students: 2• Average offers for MS students: 3

* From ECS, 2005-2006

Student Recruitment: Salary*Average starting salary for:• Bachelor’s: $58,453• Master’s: $71,548

Signing bonus:• Bachelor’s: 45% receive; average is $6,400• Master’s: 57% receive; average is $10,250

* From ECS, 2005-2006

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

Plasma Lighting

• Panels of microcavity plasma lamps invented by Gary Eden and Sung-Jin Park

• Lamps require no ballast, reflector, or heavy metal housing

• Panels are lighter, brighter, and more efficient than incandescent lights and are expected to approach or surpass the efficiency of fluorescent lighting

• Flexible panel arrays could be used as photo-therapeutic bandages to treat certain diseases

Gary Eden and Sung-Jin Park

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

Space Weather • Assistant Professor Jonathan Makela installed a narrow-field

ionospheric airglow imager at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

• Two GPS scintillation monitors were also installed at the site, and are used to study ionospheric instabilities at a smaller size scale.

• Associate Professor Farzad Kamalabadi also working to predict space weather.

• Has shown the first determinations of fully, three-dimensional temperature maps of the sun’s corona.

• Both projects may lead to a better understanding space storms and could improve ability to forecast space weather.

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Microscopy (ISAM)

• Developed by Associate Professor Steve Boppart and Assistant Professor Scott Carney, with research associates Tyler Ralston and Daniel Marks.

• Produces crisp, three-dimensional images from blurry, out-of-focus data.

• Uses light from an out-of-focus image.• Can be applied to existing hardware with minor modifications. • Assists doctors by providing faster diagnostic information.• Could lead to imaging large tissue volumes without removal.

ECE Faculty Lead The Way Via Education, Research, 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 Legacy:

A history of fundamental contributions

SOUND ON FILMOn June 9, 1922, Professor Joseph T. Tykociner gave the first-everdemonstration 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 soundwould be synchronized.

ULTRASOUNDProfessor William Fry founded the Bioacoustics Laboratory in 1946and began conducting pioneering research in the use of ultrasoundas a noninvasive surgical tool and a visualization tool for diagnostics,work which contributed to today’s ultrasound imaging tools.

TRANSISTORIn 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 CIRCUITWhile 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 DIODEWhile working at General Electric in 1962, alumnus Nick Holonyakdeveloped the first practical, visible spectrum light-emitting diode, changing information display and illumination forever. Holonyak has been an ECE faculty member since 1963.

FLAT-PANEL PLASMA DISPLAYProfessors Donald Bitzer and Gene Slottow (both of whom are also alumni) along with student Robert Willson inventedthe plasma display panel in 1964. They received an Emmy Award for their work in 2002.