Graduate Program

Please direct all questions regarding your graduate application status to Ms. Rebekah Greene, our Graduate Coordinator, at regreene@ece.rochester.edu.

Graduate Admissions questions directed to Professor Mark Bocko, Chair of the Department, or Ms. Jennifer Steward, Department Administrator, may not be answered in a timely fashion.

Welcome to graduate studies in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The Department prepares graduate students to be technical, scientific, business leaders and productive members of our technological society. Graduate students perform innovative research under the guidance of faculty members and take advanced courses in various subfields of Electrical and Computer Engineering. We offer Ph.D. and M.S. degrees, and the vast majority of our students eventually obtain a Ph.D. details of these programs can be found in later sections. In the recent past, about 2/3 of our Ph.D. students got their first position in industry and 1/3 in academia, government, or the military. Industrial employers include large companies like Intel, Motorola, Kodak, Siemens, Lucent and many others; and small companies or start-ups, both locally and nationally. Several of our recent graduates have also founded their companies. Universities at which our recent graduates have started their teaching and research include Georgia Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Duke University, and many other technological and comprehensive institutions.

Our research programs blend the best attributes of a small department with those of very active, internationally-recognized research groups. On average, five graduate students work with each faculty member. This makes it possible for the faculty to spend considerable one-on-one time with each graduate student, and yet achieve the critical mass required to make a major impact in research. Since the median time required to receive the Ph.D. in our Department is slightly above 5 years, our incoming graduate student class averages between 15 and 20, making us one of the most selective programs in the nation. Most of our Ph.D. students received their B.S. or M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, but each year several new students come with a background in related fields, such as Physics, Computer Science, or Materials Science. With the help of their academic advisor, these students quickly acquire the background in ECE they might have lacked without increasing their time to graduation.

The research conducted in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering can be divided into three broad thrusts: (1) Computer Engineering and VLSI, (2) Signals, Communications and Imaging, and (3) Solid State Device and Optoelectronics. You will find a more complete description of each thrust and the specific research programs later in this section of our website. The research programs are strongly supported by federal, state, and industrial grants and contracts. Among the agencies supporting our research are the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the Army Research Office, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Department of Energy, New York State through NYSTAR and other programs, and many other sources. Industrial sponsors include the Semiconductor Research Corporation, Intel, IBM, Kodak, Xerox, Siemens, Schlumberger, Corning, Harris, and many other large and small companies. You will also find numerous opportunities for interdisciplinary research, through centers led by ECE faculty members. These centers include the Center for Electronic Imaging Systems, the Center for Future Health, the Rochester center for Biomedical Ultrasound, and the Music Research Laboratory. You will find more information on these and other centers in this section of our website.

The following PDF file is the Application Reference letter Form. Please contact Rebekah Greene at: regreene@ece.rochester.edu if you have any difficulty accessing this file.

Reference Letter Form