Overview - Electrical and Computer Engineering

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has a long tradition of excellence in teaching and research, starting with the inception of the Electrical Engineering program at "Brooklyn Poly" in 1885. The department rose to prominence in the mid-twentieth century for work in microwaves, communications, electrical machinery, and automatic control. Current research and degree programs focus on:

• telecommunications (including wireless and high-speed networks)
• digital signal processing (including still and video image processing)
• control and robotics
• electric power systems and power electronics
• electromagnetics and microwaves
• electrophysics of materials (especially plasmas)
• computer engineering (secure hardware design, nanoelectronic devices, circuits, architectures and CAD)

Faculty and students are engaged in research sponsored at an annual rate of about $2.5 million by government agencies and industrial organizations. Most of those projects are coordinated in centers such as the Center for Advanced Technologies in Telecommunications (CATT), which is sponsored by New York State, The NSF-sponsored Wireless Internet Center for Advanced Technology (WICAT), and the Weber Research Institute (formerly the Microwave Research Institute).
While the eminence of our department is partly due to the research and textbooks produced by our faculty, our strong reputation is largely a result of the success of our graduates in their careers after college. Therefore, the department is dedicated to serving the needs of its students, and preparing them for the evolving trends in their future fields of employment.

Faculty Highlights

Two National Academy of Engineering Members

• David Goodman
• Dante Youla

Fourteen IEEE Fellows

• Philip Balaban
• Henry Bertoni
• Joseph Bongiorno
• Robert R. Boorstyn
• David C. Chang
• Jonathan Chao
• David Goodman
• Zhong-Ping Jiang
• Spencer Kuo
• Philip Sarachik
• Leonard Shaw
• Theo Tamir
• Yao Wang
• Dante Youla

More than 15 National Awards

• Four recipients of NSF Career Awards (Elza Erkip, Zhong-Ping Jiang, Ramesh Karri, and Ivan Selesnick)
• Yong Liu, Best Paper Award of of IEEE Conference on Computer and Communications (INFOCOM) 2009
• Yong Liu, Best Paper in Multimedia Communications of the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) in 2008
• Zhong-Ping Jiang, Best Theoretical Paper Award of  the 2008 World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation
• Frank Cassara, the 2007 IEEE Athanasios Papoulis Education Award
• Elza Erkip, Co-author, Student Paper Award, IEEE International Symposium of Information Theory (ISIT) 2007
• Elza Erkip, Best Paper of the Communication Theory Symposium of IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) 2007
• Spencer Kuo, 2005 Asian-American Engineer of the Year
• Peter Voltz, the 2004 IEEE Athanasios Papoulis Education Award
• Shivendra S. Panwar and Prof. Yao Wang, 2004 IEEE Communication Society's Leonard G. Abraham Prize Paper in the field of Communications Systems
• Elza Erkip, 2004 IEEE Communications Society Stephen O. Rice Paper Prize in the Field of Communications Theory
• David Goodman, 2003 Avant Garde award from the Vehicular Technology Society of the IEEE
• Jonathan Chao, elected to be Speaker of the Year by IEEE New Jersey Coast Section, 2003
• Ramesh Karri and Ivan Selesnick, Alexander Humboldt Fellowship, 2002
• Jonathan Chao, 2001 Best Paper Award from the IEEE’s Circuits and Systems Society
• Yao Wang, New York City Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology, Young Investigator Category, Year 1999-2000
• I-Tai Lu, NSF Engineering Initiation Award
• Zhong-Ping Jiang, ARC Queen Elizabeth II Research Fellowship, 1998
• David Goodman, 1997 ACM/SIGMOBILE Award for Outstanding Contributions to Research on Mobility of Systems Users, Data, and Computing
• Nirod Das, 1993 RWP King Paper Award from IEEE AP Society
• Henry Bertoni, 1993 Neal Shepherd Best Propagation Paper Award of the IEEE VT Society

More than 100 Patents from Faculty Within the Department

More than 40 Books / Book Chapters Published by Faculty Members

Department History

Polytechnic began its electrical engineering program in 1886. In 1890, it formed its Electrical Engineering Department. Samuel Sheldon, who served as its head for the first 30 years, was the second president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Bancroft Gherardi, Jr., who went on to become vice president and chief engineer of AT&T, and to win the IEEE Edison Medal in 1932, was a member of the first class of EE graduates in 1891.

An earlier graduate, Rober G. Brown (class of 1868) designed and developed the first telephone system in Paris, France. Among his other innovations were the "French Telephone," with its separate hand piece (carrying the speaker and microphone), which rested in a cradle.

Polytechnic awarded its first PhD degrees in EE in 1937 and its educational and research programs in electrical engineering grew rapidly in scope and quality during the 1940's due to defense technology needs of World War II.

The first computer course was offered in 1951. Telecommunication activities developed significantly after publication of pioneering textbooks by Mischa Schwartz (department head 1962-65) and Athanasios Papoulis. Polytechnic's growing eminence in that field was recognized by the selection in 1983 of its Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications for major continuing support from the New York State Science and Technology Foundation (now NYSTAR, the New York Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation). Under the leadership of Richard van Slyke and Ivan Frisch, both developers of networking systems that led to the Internet, CATT developed several related degree programs and made technical contrib