Welcome to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rutgers
Welcome to the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Rutgers University. These are very
exciting times for Rutgers University in general and the ECE Department in particular. With the full
integration of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and membership in the Big Ten Academic
Alliance, Rutgers is now positioned as one of the most comprehensive public research universities in the
country. Indeed, Rutgers University consistently ranks among the top public universities in the country
and the world according to several published rankings. Equally exciting is our departmental news. ECE at
Rutgers is ranked third in the United States in terms of number of undergraduate degrees granted
according to recent ASEE data. Our faculty and students have made ECE at Rutgers into one the most
vibrant departments, creating a community that fosters excellence in education and research. This
excellence is reflected in the remarkable successes and outstanding achievements of both our students
and faculty members alike. Consistent with this excellence, our student enrollment has grown
dramatically with the undergraduate student class size at around 900 students and the graduate student
class size at around 200 students. In May 2022, the department hosted over record-high 60 Capstone
student teams with entrepreneuring and exciting senior projects under the mentorship of ECE faculty and
industry sponsors.
The ECE department offers B.S. (with Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering options), M.S., and
Ph.D. degrees, and boasts of world-class faculty who specialize in the areas of nano electronic and optical
materials; bioelectrical devices and sensors; machine learning and data science; cyber security and
privacy; computer vision; cyber physical systems; neuro imaging and modeling; signal and information
processing; advanced internet and wireless networks; human-computer interaction, virtual reality, and
high-performance computing. The department also offer two Certificate Graduate Programs in Machine
Learning and Cyber Security. The range of specialization spans from algorithms and theory to hardware
and software, with technology that supports a wide spectrum of applications related to computing,
communications, commerce, energy, medicine, safety and transportation. As such, the department is
geared towards providing a holistic education and research experience for our students, including
interdisciplinary opportunities.
Excellent facilities are available for collaborative research opportunities with local industry through the
School’s nationally recognized centers such as the Wireless Information Network Laboratory (WINLAB),
the Micro-nanofabrication and Characterization Facility, and the Center for Advanced Infrastructure and
Transportation (CAIT). There also exist collaboration opportunities at Brookhaven National Laboratory and
with clinicians at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS).
Our senior faculty members are consistently recognized with several prestigious national and
international honors, including Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Fellow
of National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and ACM Distinguished Scientist. The department currently
houses 13 IEEE Fellows, 1 AAAS Fellow, 1 NAI Fellow, 1 PFF Award, 15 NSF Career Awards, 3 DARPA Faculty
Fellows, 1 ONR YIP, and 1 ARO YIP. Our faculty members are incredibly successful in winning investigator
awards from NSF, NIH, DARPA, ARL, ARO, ONR, MxD, and other research agencies. The annual research
expenditure of the department is around $10 million. The work of our faculty also attracts substantial
media attention, such as Rutgers News, the journal Science Advances, Fortune Magazine, the Wall Street
Journal, and CNN news, further highlighting the broader impact of our work. Our faculty members have
been awarded prestigious competitive honors such as Rodkin-Weintraub Chair, Presidential Outstanding
Faculty, and Susman Award for their excellence researching and teaching works.
Our faculty and graduate students have garnered several Best Paper Awards at highly reputed
conferences, including IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award, M. Barry Carlton
Best Paper Award, and International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN)
Best Paper Award. The department also successfully hosted International Women's Day with women
students to celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women on this day. Our
graduate students have received prestigious IEEE Communications Society Phoenix ISS Awards for their
remarkable success in research and received ECE Best TA awards for their excellent teaching works. Our
undergraduate students received the Ashok & Yohavalli Sethu Electrical and Computer Engineering
Annual Scholarships. To cope with the pandemic, our department hosted online Open House and
information sessions for accepted students and their families. The success of ECE centers such as the
world-renowned WINLAB, Engineering Research Center (ERC) on Smart Streetscapes (CS3), and research
groups related to high performance computing, security and privacy, data science, computer vision,
neuroimaging, biosensing and cyber physical systems, is marked by a large number of external research
grants from the NSF, NIH, and defense research agencies as well as corporate grants.
Our connection with industry has grown stronger, with multiple companies providing student internships
as well as partnering and mentoring the ECE senior capstone design program. ECE also remains one of the
most sought-after majors for employers from a broad spectrum of industry, with the fundamentals that
ECE students are exposed to here making them versatile and productive employees from day one. The
success of our alumni who continue to excel in their chosen careers be it as scholars, industry leaders or
entrepreneurs, serves as a source of inspiration to our students and faculty.
I am very proud of the accomplishments highlighted in the following pages. Based on the trajectory, our
department is on a path for even greater achievements in the coming years.
Yingying (Jennifer) Chen
Department Chair and Associate Director of WINLAB
Electrical and Computer Engineering
.