Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering - Embedded Systems

The doctoral degree, i.e. the Ph.D., is primarily intended for students desiring a career in research andor collegiate teaching. The focus is on advanced ECE topics, on learning to perform research and to write research papers, and on making fundamental new contributions to an ECE topic. Students take advanced course work and write a doctoral dissertation, also called a thesis. Program Overview: Students newly admitted to a doctoral program are classified as precandidates. Upon entering a doctoral program, there is a Ph.D. qualifying process, normally completed during the first two years. After all requirements except the dissertation are completed, students become candidates. Students entering the ECE doctoral program with a bachelor’s degree typically become candidates in the third year and and are strongly encouraged to complete the degree within five years. Such students ordinarily complete the requirements for a master’s degree along the way and receive this degree in addition to the Ph.D. A masters thesis is optional. Students who enter the ECE doctoral program with a master’s in the field of their program typically become candidates in their second year and are strongly encouraged to complete the degree within four years. Such students are not ordinarily eligible to receive an additional master’s degree. Embedded systems are special-purpose computers built into devices not generally considered to be computers. For example, the computers in vehicles, wireless sensors, medical devices, wearable fitness devices, and smartphones are embedded systems. The embedded systems market is growing 50% faster than that for general-purpose computing. Designing embedded systems is a huge challenge because they have so many requirements: they often need to be tiny, high-performance, inexpensive, reliable, and last a long time on poor power sources, all while sensing and influencing their surroundings. Faculty and students are applying their skills to the entire “stack,” from transistors and circuits to operating systems and applications.