Computer Engineering

Related Student Organizations and University Programs

Career Paths

With a professional education grounded in the liberal arts, computer engineering majors are prepared for careers in business, industry and government. Recent Bucknell graduates have secured the following positions:

Computer Technician, BAI Aerosystems
Software Engineer, Northrop Grumman Corporation
Software Engineer, Raytheon Company
Computer Engineer, Space Security Systems
Computer Engineer, Picatinny Arsenal
Computer Engineering Specialist, Federal Aviation Administration
Network Engineer, Lightspeed Technologies

Grants & Awards

Computer engineering faculty members have recently made the following achievements:

L. Felipe Perrone: Program co-chair for the 2nd International Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques (SIMUTools 2009), general cochair for the the 3rd International Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques (SIMUTools 2010), associate editor for the ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation

Richard J. Kozick: Grant from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania, Associate Editor for Journal of the Franklin Institute, IEEE Signal Processing Letters and EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, 2006 Best Paper Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society

Selected Faculty Publications

Bucknell’s computer engineering faculty members’ scholarship has recently appeared in the following sampling of publications:

IEEE Security and Privacy

International Journal of Intelligent Information Technology

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics

Internships

Recent Bucknell students have secured internships with:

Lockheed Martin
General Electric
Raytheon
IBM
Federal Aviation Administration

Study Abroad

Each year, about 20 percent of our engineering students study overseas in their junior year at such locations as the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom and the University of Queensland in Australia.

Program Details

Students gain a working knowledge of mathematics, natural sciences, engineering sciences, electrical engineering and computer science. The computer engineering degree program equally combines electrical engineering and computer science with a small number of niche topics. Computer engineers understand and can design the entire computing system from the electrical circuits that compose the system to the high-level programming that drives the system.
Computer engineering students complete a major design project in their senior year. Students gain formal design experience that integrates and applies basic computer engineering to the process of system design and implementation.
Bucknell’s engineering students are good communicators and emerging professionals with sensitivity to a broad range of societal concerns in making decisions, including an understanding of, and appreciation for, the needs of society in a global context.
Most core courses and many elective courses have weekly laboratory sessions that provide hands-on learning experiences.
Students in computer engineering are likely to study the following areas in courses, design projects or research with faculty members: robotics, computer graphics architecture, microcontroller systems, reconfigurable computing systems, applications of reconfigurable computing, computer networking, mobile computing, mobile ad hoc networking and systems security.

Faculty

Courses in the computer engineering major are taught by all members of the electrical engineering and computer science departments. The following six faculty members serve on the Computer Engineering Steering Committee and coordinate the program.

Richard Kozick, electrical engineering
B.S. Bucknell; M.S. Stanford; Ph.D. Pennsylvania
Scholarly interests: sensor networks, wireless communications, statistical signal processing

Xiannong Meng, computer science
B.S. Southeast University, China; M.S., Ph.D.Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Scholarly interests: intelligent web search, computer networks, operating systems

Kundan Nepal, electrical engineering
B.S. Trinity College; M.S. University of Southern California; Ph.D. Brown
Scholarly interests: reconfigurable computing and nanometer digital VLSI system design

L. Felipe Perrone, computer science
Electric Engineer & M.Sc. UFRJ, Brazil; M.Sc., Ph.D.William & Mary
Scholarly interests: simulation, parallel and distributed computing, wireless networks, cybersecurity

Joshua Steinhurst, computer science
B.S. Vermont; M.S., Ph.D. North Carolina (Chapel Hill)
Scholarly interests: computer graphic architecture, global illumination, atmospheric optics

Michael S. Thompson, electrical engineering
B.S. North Carolina State; M.S., Ph.D. Virginia Tech
Scholarly interests: mobile ad hoc networking, network applications, mobile computing, reconfigurable computing

Undergraduate Research

Computer engineering students often work side-by-side with faculty members on research projects. Students can develop their own independent research projects under the guidance of a faculty mentor, or they can assist a faculty member with his or her scholarly work. Recent project titles include:

An Open-source Real-time Traffic Generator for Network Performance Analysis
Acceleration of Speech Processing Algorithms Using Reconfigurable Hardware
Low-Power FPGA Routing Switches Using Adaptive Body Biasing Techniques
Developing Error Tolerant Techniques for Content-Addressable Memory
Two Novel Photon Query Reordering Algorithms
Automated Optimization Study of Attack Models for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks
An Investigation of Policies for Caching Radio Propagation Calculations in the Simulation of Wireless Networks
Web Engineering and the Social Internet

Facilities & Resources

Bucknell’s computer science program is supported by state-of-the-art computing laboratories that are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Most computer science courses make use of the engineering college workstation environment: three laboratories with a total of 70 Linux PCs. Other computing facilities include:

Large number of high-performance field programmable gate array (FPGA) platforms for teaching and research in custom, high-speed processing applications and reconfigurable computing
Linux Computing Cluster – a group of Linux servers with multiple processors and large amounts of memory for running computationally intensive jobs
Private computer network for teaching and research in networking and security
State of the art Linux laboratories for teaching in computer science and modern, well-equipped electrical engineering laboratories

Courses Offered

Core courses:

Circuit Theory
Computer Architecture
Computer Organization and Programming
Foundations of Electrical Engineering
Digital System Design
Electronics
Introduction to Computer Science
Microcontroller System Design
Operating Systems Design
Probability with Applications in Electrical Engineering
Programming Language Design
Senior Design
Signals and Systems

Electives:

Advanced Digital Design
Communication Systems
Compiler Optimization
Computer and Network Security
Computer Communication Networks
Computer Graphics
Digital Signal Processing
Distributed Computing
Digital VLSI Circuit Design
High Performance Computing
Introduction to Analysis of Algorithms
Introduction to Databases
Mechatronics
Theory of Computation
Web Information Retrieval

Graduate School

Computer engineering graduates are prepared for advanced study in computer engineering, electrical engineering, or computer science, as well as professional programs in business, law and medicine. Recent graduates in computer science and electrical engineering have entered graduate degree programs at Syracuse, Purdue, Georgia Tech, University of North Carolina, North Carolina State, College of William & Mary, University of Illinois and Penn State.