Academic Tracks

There are eight named academic tracks spanning electrical and computer engineering around which admissions, course offerings, and advising are organized, as listed below. However, the interests and work of students and faculty alike may overlap more than one track.  

Architecture, Computer Systems, and Embedded Systems. Computer architecture is at the interface of computer hardware and software. Its practitioners are responsible for specifying, designing, and implementing at the architecture level the hardware structures that carry out the work specified by computer software. Computer architects share the responsibility for providing mechanisms that algorithms, compilers, and operating systems can use to enhance the performance and/or energy requirements of running applications. Computer architecture spans many dimensions, such as the scope of a processor (embedded processors, desktop systems, servers, and supercomputers); the target application (general-purpose versus domain-specific); the characteristics of the design objectives (speed, power consumption, cost, reliability, availability, and reconfigurability); and the measurement and analysis of resulting designs.

bioECE. Understanding, engineering, and interfacing with biological systems are among humanity’s most important challenges, impacting numerous fields from basic science to health. Motivated by this larger vision, the bioECE track is focused on the intersection of electrical and computer engineering with biology and medicine. It includes biomedical instrumentation, biophotonics, health informatics, bioinformatics, neural engineering, computational neuroscience, and synthetic biology. Associated faculty have expertise in diverse topics: cardiovascular instrumentation, neuroscience, neural engineering and the machine-brain interface, image and signal processing (feature extraction and diagnostic interpretation), health information technologies (data mining, electronic medical records analysis), VLSI biomedical circuits (biosensing, lab-on-a-chip), algorithms for large-scale genomic analysis, and molecular programming (engineering molecules that compute).

Decision, Information, and Communications Engineering. This track involves research and design in the following fields: (1) Communications and networking: all aspects of transmission of data, including: wireless communications, communication theory, information theory, networking, queueing theory, stochastic processes, sensor networks; (2) Data science and machine learning: all aspects of extraction of knowledge from data, including: algorithms, data mining, optimization, statistics, pattern recognition, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence; and (3) Controls, signals, and systems: estimation and detection; signal, image and video processing; linear and nonlinear systems.

Electromagnetics and Acoustics. This track includes the study of electromagnetic and acoustic phenomena ranging from ultralow frequencies to the visible spectrum. The activities in electromagnetics involve research in antenna design, radar scattering, computational methods, wave-matter interaction, bioelectromagnetics, wave manipulation using artificial materials, wireless propagation channels, microwave and millimeter-wave integrated circuits, guided wave devices and systems, electromagnetic forces (including electrostrictive and magnetostrictive forces), and Maxwell's stress tensor. The activities in acoustics involve research in transducers, microelectromechanical systems, atmospheric and underwater acoustics, and noise and vibration control.

Electronics, Photonics, and Quantum Systems. This track focuses on the development and improvement of electronic, photonic, optoelectronic, spintronic and micro-electromechanical (MEMS) materials, devices and systems for a variety of applications. Electronic device examples include transistors for nano-CMOS, back-end-of-the-line silicon, power transistors and post-CMOS logic, memory, analog, and mixed-signal applications based on quantum mechanical tunneling and electron spin. Photonic devices include photodetectors, LEDs and lasers, including topological photonics, metamaterials, metasurfaces, and other novel nanophotonic structures, optical interconnects for short and long-range communication, displays and solar cells. There is research on acoustic, chemical and biological sensors, as well as quantum transport devices such as Josephson junctions. Material systems include unstrained and strained column IV and III-V semiconductors grown by molecular beam epitaxy or various types of chemical vapor deposition, organics and polymers, thin-film and novel 0D, 1D and 2D materials such as quantum dots, nanowires, graphene and other 2D layered materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides, as well as insulators such as high-dielectric-constant materials. Research in systems includes those for quantum information processing, optical systems for signal processing and very-high-speed communications, and electronic systems such as compute-in-memory and neuromorphic computing.

Integrated Circuits and Systems. This track involves all aspects of analysis, design, synthesis, and implementation of digital, analog, mixed-signal, and radio frequency (RF) integrated circuits and systems for applications in computing, sensing, and communications. Research in the area spans levels of abstraction from devices to systems-on-chip (SoC), and involves the transceiver architectures, data converters, memory technologies, signal processing systems, integrated bio-chips, neuromorphic computing, high-performance and low-power design, fault tolerance, design for manufacturability (DFM), design for test (DFT), verification,  computer-aided design (CAD) and electronic design automation (EDA).

Power Electronics and Power Systems. This track involves generation, transmission, distribution, conversion, storage, and management of electric energy. Research activities include but are not limited to advanced power semiconductor devices; high-frequency-power-electronic conversion systems; high-frequency magnetics; medium voltage power electronics for applications in renewable energy, energy storage and smart grid systems; dc power grids; power system analyses; modeling and simulation of power systems; grid data analytics; security and resilience of power grid infrastructures; microgrids; protection systems; energy system economics and optimization; electricity markets; power system harmonics; power quality; and distributed generation.

Software Engineering and Systems. This track involves all aspects of engineering software systems. In addition to the problem of requirements, research and study in the area addresses architecting, designing, building, testing, analyzing, evaluating, deploying, maintaining, and evolving software systems. Problems investigated include theory, techniques, methods, processes, tools, middleware, and environments for all types of software systems in all types of domains and applications. This area of study also is available to working professionals through the alternatively scheduled Software Engineering Executive Master's Degree program administered by Texas Engineering Executive Education (TxEEE).