Graduate Studies in ECE at OSU

Why ECE at OSU?

The graduate program in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) prepares students for technical leadership roles in industry, academia, and government. The training provides them with a fundamental understanding of engineering sciences so they develop creative and innovative approaches to solving important engineering problems of interest to mankind. The graduate program offers degrees leading to either a M.S. or Ph.D. in ECE.

The ECE graduate program was rated as one of the top 20 programs in the nation by US News and World Report in 2006. There are approximately 300 graduate students in the program that are evenly split between the M.S. and Ph.D. programs. The excellence of the graduate program can be measured by the following factors:

• Faculty

  There are 48 faculty members and 14 research scientists in the ECE department with 21 of these being IEEE fellows and many others being fellows in other societies. There are four endowed Chairs and two endowed Professorships. Many in the faculty are internationally renowned researchers with large research programs and a large number of graduate students.

• Facilities

  The ECE department has world-class experimental facilities and access to world-class computational facilities at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC). Within each of the research areas there are some unique facilities. In the solid state area, there is a molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) system and an electron beam nano-lithography system. In the electromagnetics area, the compact range system is one of the few available at a university. Also, there is a multi-frequency radiometer system for passive sensing and a new wireless lab. that has a probe station and vector signal generators and analyzers to characterize a complete transceiver system. In the circuits area, they have the only large signal network analyzer system at a university. In the power area, the high voltage lab houses one of the largest tesla coil systems in academia. A more detailed discussion of the numerous facilities in ECE is provided at http://www.ece.osu.edu/research/labs.html.

• Quality of Students

  There are many indicators of the high quality of students that we admit to our graduate program and those who eventually matriculate. These students represent some of the best in the United States as well as the best around the world. In 2005, the entering class of 50 students had the following figures:

  • 3 Recipients of the NSF Graduate Fellowship

  • 16 recipients of the University fellowship. This number is the second highest of all departments at the University

  • Median GRE quantitative score was 800 out of 800

  • Most of the students were ranked in the top 10% of their class

• Success of Former Graduates

  The training of the graduate students is recognized by many companies and government agencies as being outstanding, and many of them come specifically to OSU to recruit these students. Most of these students have gone on to have highly successful careers with many eventually becoming executives within their company. Some notable examples are:

  • William C.Y. Lee, Chairman of LinkAir Communications (Previously CTO of Vodaphone Airtouch (which became Verizon))

  • Eric Evans, Director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory

  • Bami Bastami, CEO and President of Anadigics

  • Robert Chau, Senior Intel Fellow and Director of Transistor Research and Nanotechnology

  • Ed Zelnio, Division Chief at Air Force Research Laboratory

  • Alan Ecker, Executive Vice President of Scientific Atlanta

  • Matt Ganz, CEO and President of HRL (formerly Hughes Research Laboratories)

  • Marvin White, Sherman Fairchilds Professor, Lehigh University; member of the National Academy of Engineering

  • Thomas Miller, Director of R&D at Raytheon

  • John Procario, Senior Vice President and COO of CINERGY Corp.