Research
The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UCSB is known for its high-impact and interdisciplinary research. Many revolutionary innovations have been developed by ECE research and in the tradition of excellence, our faculty continue to pioneer new technical frontiers.
The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department:
- ranked in the top four ECE Departments in the nation in the latest NRC report
- has two Nobel Prize laureates (Kroemer – 2000 and Nakamura – 2014), two National Medal of Technology & Innovation recipients (Culler – 1999 and Gossard – 2015), five faculty in the National Academy of Science and 15 faculty in the National Academy of Engineering – five of the faculty members are in both academies
- supported by various organizations including NSF, NIH, DOD, DOE and local, private and state agencies
Research in the ECE Department is carried out in four key areas with the focus on but not limited to:
Communications & Signal Processing - signal processing for communication; wireless communication networks; wireless sensor networks; signal and image acquisition; signal storage, transmission, organization; signal processing (reconstruction, compression, enhancement, (de)coding); image analysis (vision and bio-microscopy); haptics, robotics, tactile sensors, signal and image acquisition (tactile), wearable computing, soft electronics; information theory; cyber-physical systems; smart cities; high-dimensional signal and information processing; mathematical optimization
Computer Engineering - bioinspired computing; circuit and system design; computer architecture; artificial intelligence for design and test; emerging technologies for computing; cloud computing; nanotechnology; neuromorphic computing; system verification; software and languages
Control Systems - robust modeling and identification; nonlinear and hybrid systems; robot locomotion and manipulation; numerical algorithms; cooperative control of autonomous agents; networked control systems; advanced sensing and actuation; systems biology; underactuated systems; magnetic bearing systems; robotic networks; sensor networks; game theory; analysis/design social systems; smart grid; cyber-physical systems
Electronics & Photonics - materials growth by molecular-beam epitaxy (mbe) and metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (mocvd); novel compound semiconductor heterostructures; epitaxy of quantum wires and dots; materials characterization; high-resolution fabrication techniques for semiconductor device structures; high speed photonic and electronic devices; semiconductor device physics; microwave, millimeter wave and thz electronics; high-power solid-state electronics; advanced photonic devices; nanophotonics; photonic integrated circuits; microwave photonics; electromagnetic theory and antennas; fiber-optic networks; nanotechnology spintronics; radio-frequency cmos integrated circuits; optoelectronic transceivers; silicon photonics; space optical communications; high-speed optical links; optoelectronic/electronic integration and co-design; photonic switching, devices and networks; integrated photonic and electronic packaging; power management integrated circuits; power electronics
Nature Communications – "Building Brain-Inspired Computing"
ECE Prof. Dmitri Strukov and three other scientists talked to the journal about the opportunities and challenges in developing brain-inspired computing technologies, namely neuromorphic computing
Please tell us about your research background and how it brought you to work on neuromorphic computing?
Dmitri Strukov (DS): I was trained as an electrical engineer and got interested in developing circuits and architectures using emerging electron devices in my graduate school at Stony Brook University. Afterwards, I moved to Hewlett Packard Laboratories as a postdoctoral researcher and switched my attention to device physics. I spent most of my time developing models for mixed electronic-ionic conductors that could be used to implement resistive switching devices (known as memristors nowadays). This experience naturally led me to choose neuromorphic computing—one of the most promising applications of memristors—as my research area after I joined University of California at Santa Barbara. My major focus now is on the development of practical mixed-signal circuits for artificial neural networks. This is a challenging topic because it spans across a broad range of disciplines, from electron devices to algorithms. In the long term, I hope that our research will lead to practically useful neuromorphic systems that will be used in everyday life.
- Why do we need neuromorphic computing?
- What can we learn from our brain for information processing? How to emulate human brain using electronic devices and where are we now?
- What are the major hurdles to date towards realizing neuromorphic computing from your perspective?
- and more questions...
Recent Research News
ECE Profs. Yuan Xie and B.S. Manjunath receive IEEE Computer Society McCluskey Award
ECE Prof. Dan Blumenthal receives The Optical Society of America (OSA) C.E.K. Mees Medal
ECE Prof. Kaustav Banerjee’s work on 3D integration w/ 2D materials in The UCSB Current
ECE Prof. Yuan Xie named 2019 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow
ECE Prof. Emeritus Sanjit Mitra elected as a 2019 National Academy of Inventors Fellow
ECE Prof. Kaustav Banerjee named to Clarivate Analytics’ "2019 Highly Cited Researchers"
Prof. Blumenthal's FRESCO project in The UCSB Current article "Quiet Light for Future Data Ctrs"