Earn your doctorate with ECE

Meet our facultyResearch Areas

To satisfy the course requirement for the Ph.D. degree, the student must successfully complete 36 credits of course work and 12 credits of ENEE899: Doctoral Dissertation Research. A grade of C- or better must be earned in each course, and an overall minimum GPA of 3.0 must be maintained.

All Ph.D. students must complete and gain approval for a proposed plan of study within the first semester of enrollment. The main conditions for approval are:

  • in the opinion of the student’s advisor and graduate director, the program must be coherent;
  • the program must satisfy the rules listed below;
  • non-ENEE courses that are not pre-approved (see Course Information section) must receive special approval by the student’s advisor and the graduate director, in the context of the proposed plan of study; such approval must be obtained before the start of the semester in which the student plans to take the course.

Modifications to the plan of study can be filed subsequently, again subject to approval by the student’s advisor and the graduate director.

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Technical Divisions

Communications and Signal Processing consists of two main aspects. The first is communications and networking, which primarily addresses the challenge of how to efficiently and effectively deliver information from one place to the other. Typical examples are high-speed networks, Internet, cellular and satellite communications, and WiFi or wireless area networks. Representative technical subjects are information theory, digital communications, wireless networking, compression and coding, network protocol design, performance analysis, and security.

The second aspect is signal and image processing, where the main challenge is to design efficient and effective algorithms, architectures, and systems to describe and represent signals, extract information, reconstruct or recover content, and process or fuse signals and information. Representative technical subjects are signal/image/video/speech/audio processing, radar and sonar, wireless communications, computer vision, and information forensics and assurance.

  • Alexander Barg
  • Rama Chellappa
  • Sanghamitra Dutta
  • Anthony Ephremides
  • Carol Y. Espy-Wilson
  • Richard J. La
  • K.J. Ray Liu
  • Armand Makowski
  • Prakash Narayan
  • Adrian Papamarcou
  • Shihab Shamma
  • Mark Shayman
  • Jonathan Simon
  • Steven Tretter
  • Sennur Ulukus
  • Min Wu
  • Kaiqing Zhang

The field of Computer Engineering sits at the boundary of hardware and software design.  Researchers in this field integrate electronic circuits and systems, software, and algorithms to build efficient computer systems that can be either general-purpose or application specific.  The faculty interests in this area cover a broad spectrum ranging from optimization techniques for nano-circuits, embedded systems, design methodologies for Internet of Things, hardware security and cybersecurity, high-performance processor architectures, design of memory systems, Computer-Aided Design for signal processing systems, and parallel computing.

Faculty working in this technical division include:

  • Rajeev Barua
  • Shuvra S. Bhattacharyya
  • Tudor Dumitras
  • Manoj Franklin
  • Bruce Jacob
  • Joseph JaJa
  • A. Yavuz Oruc
  • Charalampos (Babis) Papamanthou
  • Gang Qu
  • Charles Silio
  • Dana Dachman-Soled
  • Ankur Srivastava
  • Uzi Vishkin
  • Donald Yeung

This broad subject-area is supported by a strong faculty for theoretical studies in Intelligent Control, Adaptation and Learning, and Physical Modeling, as well as linking such studies to advances in related areas of Communications, Computing, Information Theory, and Signal Processing. Mathematical abstraction and data-driven approaches are investigated to address fundamental problems pertinent to creating resilient technological systems such as smart electric grids, cooperating robots, human-equivalent learning programs, secure autonomous mobility etc. The work incorporates multi-disciplinary scientific threads, from mathematics and physics to neuroscience and biological inspiration for technological realizations.

Faculty working in this division include:

  • Eyad H. Abed
  • John S. Baras
  • Gilmer L. Blankenship
  • P.S. Krishnaprasad
  • William Levine
  • Steven Marcus
  • Nuno Martins
  • André Tits
  • Kaiqing Zhang

Microelectronics faculty have internationally recognized research programs in the hardware that enables our newest technology, from cell phones to clean energy distribution. Research that extends the nanoelectronics revolution into the 21st century, including two-dimensional materials, solid state devices, high resolution CMOS sensors and nanoscale mixed-signal circuit design, exposes students to the forefront of these fields. UMD is very active in the new Wide Bandgap Semiconductors, and their applications which are giving rise to a revolution in power electronics and green energy.   Our advanced research in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems or MEMS is enabling a new generation in micro and nano-robotics.  Researchers at UMD not only design, but also build these futuristic devices at the multi-million-dollar Maryland Nanofabrication Center. Devices and circuits designed and patented have also paved the way to high-tech startups and related entrepreneurial endeavors.

Faculty working in this technical division include:

  • Pamela Abshire
  • David F. Barbe^
  • Reza Ghodssi
  • Neil Goldsman
  • Timothy Horiuchi
  • Agis A. Iliadis
  • John Melngailis
  • Robert Newcomb
  • Martin Peckerar^

^ Faculty Emeritus

Electrophysics faculty have active research programs in areas such as magnetically confined plasma, high power sources of coherent and pulse radiation and the interaction of radiation with plasmas and solids, nonlinear dynamics and chaos, lasers, nonlinear and quantum optics, quantum dots and nanophotonics, optical communication and computation, plasmonics, solar energy conversion, bioelectromagnetics, magnetics and spintronics. 

Faculty working in this division include: 

  • Thomas M. Antonsen
  • Mario Dagenais
  • Christopher Davis
  • Julius Goldhar
  • Romel Gomez
  • Victor Granatstein
  • Mohammad Hafezi
  • Ping-Tong Ho
  • Wesley Lawson
  • C.H. Lee^
  • Isaak D. Mayergoyz
  • Howard Milchberg
  • Jeremy Munday
  • Thomas E. Murphy
  • Edward Ott
  • Herbert Rabin^
  • Martin Reiser^
  • Leonard Taylor^
  • Edo Waks
  • Kawthar Zaki^

^ Faculty Emeritus


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