Welcome

Welcome to the website of the Electrical Engineering Department at UCLA. Browse around and you will learn about our pursuit of excellence in all aspects of the academic enterprise.

You will learn about our up-to-date courses covering topics across the entire spectrum of the electrical engineering discipline, about faculty that are leaders in their fields and pursuing cutting-edge research programs, about graduate students working on challenging projects, and about undergraduate students pursuing their education in a research and education environment that is dynamic and forward looking.

The Field of Electrical Engineering

The field is at a significant crossroad, where interactions among the various disciplines of electrical engineering, basic sciences, biology, and information technology are converging closer to each other with far reaching consequences to society, everyday life, and electrical engineering itself. Several trends are emering that elevate the complexity of sensing, analysis, and processing of information to new levels:

• The rate at which information needs to be communicated is increasing steadily to rates not imagined before. Vast volumes of information need to be processed and communicated reliably and quickly.

• The scales at which the operations of sensing and information processing need to be performed are shrinking. Sensor and actuator dimensions are becoming smaller in response to advances in micro-, bio-, and nanotechnologies.
  
  
  
• The complexity of the systems under study is increasing. Complex systems are shifting the emphasis from the study of stand-alone systems to the study of complex intertwined systems or "systems of systems.
  
  
• Research challenges are emerging from manipulations at the nano- and molecular scales, from the convergence of electronics and biology, and from linking the virtual world to the physical world. New application frontiers are being explored, e.g., in biological and environmental sciences, with substantial economic, scientific, and social impacts.