Overview of newly formed Dept. of EECS

Kevin TomsovicCTI Professor and EECS Department Head

tomsovic@tennessee.edu; 865-974-3461

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

• July 2007, Electrical and Computer Engineering merged with Computer Science to form new department with– 38 faculty– 299 BS students (78 graduates in 2007)– 125 MS students (62 graduates in 2007)– 118 Ph.D. students (16 graduates in 2007)– Research expenditures of $10+ million per year.– Close collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory– History of entrepreneurship – CTI, Garmin, Spinlab,

Perceptrics, Concorde Microsystems, EPRI, Electrotek, CSI, SMNP, Dongarra’s work led to Matlab and Mathworks, etc.

• Offer three degrees (BS, MS, Ph.D.) in Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering

New Min H. Kao EECS Building

• UT EE alumnus Min H. Kao (CEO of Garmin: GPS manufacturer) donated $12.5 million to UT which has been matched by $25 million from the state of Tennessee to build a new ECE building (Total: $37.5 million).

• Building begun, expected completion in Fall 2010.

• Dr. Kao has also donated $5 million to UT for funding scholarships, fellowships, and professorships in EECS.

http://www.engr.utk.edu/gift/

Trends in Engineering/ScienceSome recent reports

The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century

– The pace of technological innovation will continue to be rapid (most likely accelerating).

– The world in which technology will be deployed will be intensely globally interconnected.

– The population of individuals who are involved with or affected by technology (e.g., designers, manufacturers, distributors, users) will be increasingly diverse and multidisciplinary.

– Social, cultural, political, and economic forces will continue to shape and affect the success of technological innovation.

– The presence of technology in our everyday lives will be seamless, transparent, and more significant than ever.

Trends in Engineering/ScienceSome recent reports

Rising above the Gathering Storm (National Academies Report)

• Increasing competition from abroad• Technical and scientific leadership eroding • Examples

• The United States is today a net importer of high-technology products.• In 2003, only three American companies ranked among the top 10 recipients of

patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.• In Germany, 36% of undergraduates receive their degrees in science and

engineering. In China, the figure is 59%, and in Japan 66%. In the United States, the corresponding figure is 32%.

Two key challenges identified: • creating high-quality jobs for Americans and • responding to the nation’s need for clean, affordable, and reliable energy.

Science & Engineering Degrees

Asia = China, India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Natural science = math, physics, chemistry, astronomy, biological, and earth, atmospheric, ocean, agricultural sciences and

computer sciences.Source: Science & Engineering Indicators, 2002

U.S. Asia

Engineering/Technology Workforce TrendsDegrees

[AAES/EWC, 2004]

0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

70000

80000

90000

Bachelor’s

Master’s Doctorate

Electrical Engineering TrendsBachelor Degrees

Research Funding

Comments on these National Trends• Enrollments in technical fields are showing an unhealthy trend

– Need to broaden what constitutes engineering in general, but particularly within EE/CE/CS, – Need to do more to attract students to our fields, particularly, among underrepresented

groups, – Need to somehow address image problems (EECS is much more than just computers and

programming) • Serious distortions appearing in national R&D enterprise

– Shift of Federal R&D toward biomedical sciences and away from physical sciences and engineering (see next slide)

– Federal R&D has declined from 70% of national R&D in the 1970s to around 25% today

Also easy to be too pessimistic so we want to be careful not to overreact – NAE Engineer 2020 report emphasizes importance of retaining teaching of traditional

analytical skills– Most predictions of job opportunities look very positive – for example, recent CNN report

indicates 5 of the top 10 most in demand jobs over the next 20 years will be in CS and EE related areas

What do EECS graduates do?1

• Vary by technical, experience and business components– Research

– Design and Development

– Testing and Evaluation

– Application / Manufacturing

– Maintenance / Service

– Management

– Other Functions – Sales, marketing, etc.

• Also by industry– Telecommunications

– Energy and Power

– Semiconductors

– Aerospace

– Bioengineering

– Manufacturing

– Services and related professions

– Education and research

– Transportation and automotive

215 Kelvin

1. From Sloan Career Center

Computer ScienceBy discipline:

• Architecture, Parallel Computing and SystemsThose focusing on the specialty area of architecture develop hardware designs, programming. Languages,

and their compilers for next-generation computers and computing components. The specialty area of parallel computing area focuses on projects of varying size and investigates the software aspects of computation on computers composed of multiple processors.

• Bioinformatics and Computational BiologyResearch in this area includes developing efficient and scalable algorithms for biomolecular simulation

and applying data mining, statistical machine learning, natural language processing, and information retrieval to analyze and mine all kinds of biological data, including DNA sequences, protein sequences and structures, microarray data, and biology literature, for the purpose of facilitating biology discovery.

• Database and Information SystemsIndividuals working in this area would conduct fundamental and cutting-edge research in databases, data

mining, web mining, information retrieval, and natural language processing. Current areas of focus might include data integration, exploring and integrating the "Deep Web;" schema matching; security; mining data streams and sequential and semi-structured data; operating systems support for storage systems; text retrieval and mining; bio-informatics; database support for high performance computing; and top-k query processing.

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Computer ScienceBy discipline:

• Graphics, Visualization and the Human Computer Interface

Graphics and visualization research includes modeling and animation of natural phenomena, computational topology, graphics hardware utilization, image based rendering, implicit surfaces, mesh processing and simplification, procedural modeling and texturing, shape modeling, surface parameterization, and visibility processing. Human-Computer Interface research involves user interface tools that better support early design tasks, systems and environments that help users maintain information awareness, tools for multimedia authoring and design, interfaces that foster social interaction, and, more generally, human-computer interaction.

• Systems and NetworkingNetworking and distributed systems group research includes a broad range of topics that include mobile

systems, wireless protocols, ad-hoc networks, Quality of Service management, multimedia networking, peer-to-peer networking, routing, network simulations, active queue management, and sensor networks.

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Computer ScienceOr more specifically for UT:• Visualization – molecular dynamics, image processing for

biomedical applications• High performance computing – Innovative Computing

Lab, new NSF super-computer• Computer networks – new concepts, e.g., data depot

networks• Data mining – bioinformatics• Education – whiteboard tools for data structures• Reconfigurable computing – biological data processing• Software engineering – automotive applications

Emission tomography (amyloid laden spleen).

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Computer EngineeringBy discipline:• Coding, Cryptography, and Information ProtectionComputer engineers in this area are developing novel methods for protecting digital images, music, and other information

from errors in transmission or storage, copyright infringement and other forms of tampering. Coding theory is used to detect and correct errors caused by distortions in the transmission or storage of digital information, or to compress information.

• Communications and Wireless NetworksThis specialty area focuses on a broad range of topics that will advance the frontiers of communications systems and

networks (with particular attention to wireless), modulation and error-control coding, and information theory. Computer engineers working in this area may explore wireless communication opportunities to take advantage of new frequency bands and increase the efficiency of current bands.

• Compilers and Operating SystemsThose focusing on the specialty area of compilers and operating systems design future computer operating systems,

libraries, and applications to be automatically customized for each deployment environment. They might develop new operating system architectures, transparent program analysis techniques, post-link-time code transformation algorithms, and novel quality assurance techniques.

• Computational Science and EngineeringIn this area, computational methods are applied to formulate and solve complex mathematical problems in engineering and

in the physical and the social sciences. Computer simulation methods are developed for all kinds of systems, and effective display techniques are employed to communicate the computational results to the user. Examples include aircraft design, the plasma processing of nanometer features on semiconductor wafers, VLSI circuit design, radar detection systems, ion transport through biological channels, and much more.

215 Kelvin

Computer EngineeringBy discipline:• Computer Networks, Mobile Computing, and Distributed SystemsIndividuals working in this area would build integrated environments for computing, communications, and information

access over heterogeneous underlying technologies. Specific projects might include shared channel wireless networks, adaptive resource management in dynamic distributed systems including mobile systems, improving the quality of service in mobile and ATM environments, a platform for adaptive computing and seamless memory over heterogeneous wireless networks, and reliable and efficient communication on a fast Ethernet cluster.

• Computer Systems: Architecture, Parallel Processing, and DependabilityThe Computer Systems area encompasses a broad spectrum of research projects that address all aspects of reliable, testable, secure, high-

performance computer systems. Specific projects might include designing a super-pipelined single-chip coprocessor for executing multithreaded digital signal processing applications; investigating how to build highly-available and secure computer hardware, software, network, and telecommunication systems; and developing new theory, algorithms, and tools to predict the availability of computer hardware, software, network, and telecommunication systems.

• Computer Vision and RoboticsIn this area computer engineers focus on (a) visual sensing, in which images of a scene are taken as input and estimates of the three-dimensional

characteristics of the scene are output, (b) representation, which addresses efficient visual depiction and communication of the environment, and (c) manipulation of the environment, in which the acquired three-dimensional information is used to perform tasks such as navigation and assembly. Applications offer the promise of improved human modeling, image communication, and human-computer interfaces, as well as devices such as special-purpose cameras with versatile vision sensors.

• Embedded SystemsComputer engineers working in this area focus on enhancing the speed, reliability, and performance of systems, by means of computer technology -

for example, consumer products, and business and industrial machines. Most functions of the modern automobile are controlled by embedded microprocessors. Embedded systems are currently being developed that coordinate systems such as automated vehicles and equipment to conduct search and rescue, automated transportation systems, and human-robot coordination to repair equipment in space.

215 Kelvin

Computer EngineeringOr more specifically for UT :• Communication networks – remote video systems,

real-time streaming multi-media engines, sensor networks,network routers and switches

• Robotic systems – autonomous control of vehicles• Embedded systems - cell phones, PDAs, automotive systems• Reconfigurable computing – designing chips that can

perform real-time tasks • Biomedical applications – equipment for real-time

processing of biomedical signals• Secure information systems –secure delivery of information

across the Internet and private intranets, and link/pattern analysis

Electrical EngineeringBy discipline:• Automatic ControlsThe field of automatic control spans a wide range of technologies, from aerospace to health care. The main goal of automatic

control technology is to automatically guide or regulate a system under both steady-state and transient conditions, using feedback to adapt to unknown or changing conditions. Electrical engineers design and develop automatic control systems to guide aircraft and spacecraft. They apply control technology to automatically adjust processes and machinery in manufacturing such diverse products as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, and integrated circuits. For the healthcare industry, electrical engineers design controls for medical assistance devices such as medication-injection machines and respirators.

• Digital Systems (Computer Engineering)Digital systems permeate technology in all its forms; the world has gone digital, with digital control, digital communications,

and digital computation. Electrical engineers / computer engineers design, develop, and manufacture all kinds of digital products, including both hardware and software: laptops, personal computers; mainframes; supercomputers; workstations; virtual-reality systems; video games; modems; telephone switches; embedded microcontrollers for aircraft, cars, appliances, and machines of all types. Digital computer-aided design (CAD) systems are now commonplace in all branches of engineering design-machines, structures, circuits and computer graphics are indispensable in advertising and publishing; meanwhile engineers are continually developing improved hardware and software for such applications.

• ElectromagneticsElectromagnetics deals with the transfer of energy by radiation, such as light waves, and radio waves, and the interaction of such

radiation with matter. Engineers apply electromagnetics in optical-fiber communications, radio broadcasting, wireless communications, coaxial cable systems, radar, antennas, sensors, and microwave generators and detectors, for example. Engineering researchers are examining the potential of electromagnetics in advanced computation and switching systems. Electromagnetics is one of the most analytical fields of electrical engineering in that it relies heavily on mathematics to express physical effects such as the complex relationships among electric and magnetic intensities and flux densities and material properties in space and time.

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Electrical EngineeringBy discipline:• ElectronicsElectronics is a cornerstone of technology, supporting virtually all areas of science, engineering, and medicine with products

ranging from sensitive instruments to machine controls to diagnostic equipment. Electronics deals with the release, transport, control, collection, and energy conversion of subatomic particles (such as electrons) having mass and charge. The field is a fast-changing one, as new technology supplants old in rapid succession. Electronics engineering deals with devices, equipment, and systems whose functions depend on such particles.

• Electrical PowerThe electrical power field is concerned with the generation, transmission, and distribution of electrical energy. Electrical

power engineers design and develop equipment and systems to provide electricity in homes, offices, stores, and factories. The equipment includes devices to regulate the frequency and voltage of the power delivered to consumers, to correct its power factor, and to protect the network and its customers from lightning strikes, surges, and outages. Many power engineers design power systems for aircraft and spacecraft; others provide computer-controlled energy management systems that conserve energy in manufacturing facilities; and still others design electrical motors for applications ranging from appliances to processing plants.

• Communication and Signal ProcessingThe field of communications encompasses transmission of information by electromagnetic signals through wired and wireless

links and networks. The information may be voice, images (still photographs and drawings), video, data, software, or text messages. The closely related field of signal processing involves manipulating electromagnetic signals so that they can be transmitted with greater accuracy, speed, reliability, and efficiency. Communications engineers design and develop equipment and systems for a great variety of applications, including digital telephony, cellular telephony, broadcast TV and radio, satellite communications, optical fiber communications, deep space communications, local-area networks, and Internet and World Wide Web communications. Signal processing engineers direct their attention to data compression, modulation systems, radar, sonar, computer-aided tomography (CAT), ultrasound imaging, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

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Electrical EngineeringBroad areas include:• Electronics – analog and digital, neuromorphic circuits,

microelectronics, VLSI circuits, system on a chip • Signal/image/data processing – pattern/face

recognition, sensor networks, robotics, bioinformatics, data mining

• Communications – wireless communications, radio frequency to microwave frequency, antennas, industrial plasmas

• Power Systems/Power Electronics – fuel cells, solar cells, hybrid electric vehicles, electric machines, electric utility planning, power markets

• Control Systems –motor drive control

Discussion