Electrical and electronics engineering comprises many disciplines and specialties that draw from a wide range of knowledge areas. Some specialty areas, such as power engineering, are associated with specific industries. Others, such as signal processing, have applications in many industries. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering offers the following optional focus areas for undergraduates. Regardless of interest area, the degree will still be listed as Bachelor of Electrical Engineering (BEE).

Biomedical Engineering

Biomedical engineering is an interdisciplinary field that merges the interests of engineering and the biological/medical sciences. Biomedical engineers, along with health care professionals, design prosthetic devices and electronic systems for medical use, develop monitoring and imaging equipment for clinics and hospitals, and devise biomedical research tools.

Analog and Digital Electronics

Engineers in this area use circuit theory and a broad knowledge of electronic devices to design electronic systems and subsystems for the home entertainment, telecommunication, automotive, aircraft, instrumentation, and manufacturing industries.

Communications/Digital Signal Processing

The field of communications encompasses transmission of information by electromagnetic signals through wired and wireless links and networks; signal processing involves manipulating signals so they can be transmitted with greater accuracy, speed, reliability, and efficiency. Specialists in these areas design circuits and software for transmitters and receivers, devise speech and video compression algorithms, and develop computer programs and systems for recording, analyzing and displaying all types of digital and analog information.

Control Systems

The field of automatic control spans a wide range of technologies, from aerospace to health care. Engineers who specialize in this area develop electronic circuitry and computer algorithms to automatically guide or regulate systems under both steady state and transient conditions, using feedback to adapt to unknown or changing conditions.

Electric Energy Systems/Power Electronics

The electrical power field is concerned with the generation, transmission, and distribution of electrical energy. Power engineers devise systems that generate and distribute electrical energy to homes and businesses, and design more efficient motors and generators by developing new circuits and electronics.

Fields, Magnetics, and Optics

Magnet engineers study the interaction between magnetic fields and materials, and devise methods to squeeze ever-larger amounts of data onto magnetic storage devices, such as discs. Optical engineers use light to solve diverse problems in telecommunications, data storage, laser design, sensing and imaging systems, and metrology RF engineers apply microwave and high frequency electromagnetic technology to telecommunications, radar, and high-speed circuit design.

Semiconductor Devices

Semiconductor devices are the basic building blocks of integrated circuits and other modern electronic devices. Engineers in this area apply their knowledge of solid-state physics to design improved logic gates, transistors, micro-lasers, photo detectors, and microwave devices. The constant size and speed improvement in these components has enabled the revolutionary advances in computer and telecommunications technology.

Microelectronics Processing and Materials

Microelectronics processing and materials is concerned with part of the overall fabrication and performance of an integrated circuit. Specialists study the mechanical, chemical, optical, and electrical properties of materials used in integrated circuits and develop new semiconductor materials to improve the performance of next-generation devices.