Electrical Engineering Graduate Program

Degree Requirements
The master of science in electrical engineering requires at least eight credits beyond those applied toward a bachelor’s degree. Students must also successfully complete and defend a master’s thesis to graduate. Courses must be distributed as follows:

• One credit must be ENGR 695 (Advanced Topics in Engineering Mathematics).
• One credit must be ELEC 699 (Thesis).
• At least four additional credits must be 600-level or higher elective courses in electrical engineering. Any number of credits may come in the form of independent study (ELEC 628 or 629) courses, but these must be approved by the student’s advisor.
• The remaining credits, if any, may be in any approved technical area.

Students who do not have a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering may have to take additional junior or senior-level courses to satisfy prerequisites for advanced courses.

Thesis
Earning a master’s in electrical engineering requires the successful defense of a thesis. The thesis may or may not also contribute to the state of the art in the candidate’s chosen field. The thesis requirement in electrical engineering may be satisfied by one of the following:

• An exercise in solving a practical engineering problem involving novel features, which might or might not compromise design.
• An exercise designed to develop research skills and abilities.
• An experiment or theoretical research project.

The thesis must be defended in a final oral or written examination in accordance with the deadlines imposed by the College of Engineering Graduate Committee.

Areas of Concentration
Faculty research interests include the following areas: 

• Control systems 
• Communication systems
• Computer networking 
• Electromagnetics
• Digital system design
• Digital signal processing
• Embedded computing
• High-performance computer architecture
• Information theory
• Mobile computing
• Nonlinear photonics 
• Optoelectronic materials and devices
• Speech and audio signal processing
• Smart grids
• Electrical power systems 
• Renewable energy systems
• Very-large-scale integration (VLSI)

Facilities
Graduate students have full access to all of the department’s laboratory facilities, including those for specialized applications. A wide range of microprocessors, digital logic analyzers, high-speed digital signal processors, optoelectronics equipment, high-frequency oscilloscopes, RF test and measurement equipment and computer-aided analysis and design software is available for graduate work.