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A Quarterly Newsletter for the Friends and Alumni of the UC San Diego Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Dec. 12, 2025

For our 60th anniversary year, let me welcome you to the inaugural issue of our electronic newsletter for UC San Diego’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. (It’s true we used to have another name: in 1965 we were founded as the Department of Applied Electrophysics; we became ECE in 1987. But we celebrate 60 years regardless!).

The year 2025 has been fruitful and impactful:

Our ECE graduate program is now 14th in the nation in the U.S. News & World Report rankings for electrical / electronic / communications engineering, and 12th for computer engineering (program jointly administered with CSE).

We introduced more AI-related courses, including graduate courses on AI for Smart Grids, and Ethics and Economics of AI, as well as a beginner Python coding course to facilitate undergrad engagement with the AI ecosystem.

Faculty have been deluged with major recognitions, including Professor Robert Heath’s election to the National Academy of Engineering, four (4!) colleagues becoming Fellows of the IEEE, a trip to the White House for Professor Duygu Kuzum (PECASE award), and other prestigious awards.

Our largest incoming M.S. class ever arrived in September 2025, with 383 new M.S. students, including 90 in our popular 5-year B.S./M.S. program.

Our research accomplishments border on science fiction, including the health sensor that is a sweat-powered sticker on your drinking cup, mobile batteries for grid resilience and construction sites, and high-density electrode arrays that could enable vision-restoring whole-eye transplantation.

We look forward to your engagement with ECE as we shape our electric future! 

Save the date Friday, April 10, 2026 for our 60th anniversary celebration including our Distinguished Alumni Awards dinner.

Warm regards,

Pamela Cosman
Chair, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of California, San Diego

A team of engineers at UC San Diego developed an electronic sticker that can monitor a person’s vitamin C levels using the sweat from their fingertips — no blood draws, lab visits or batteries required. Read more

In a first-of-its-kind test, engineers at UC San Diego experimented with large, mobile batteries to both charge electric construction vehicles, and also support a more resilient electric grid.  Read more

Engineers at UC San Diego created a new method to make large language models (LLMs) — such as the ones that power chatbots and protein sequencing tools — learn new tasks using significantly less data and computing power. Read more

Growing up in rural Lebanon, tinkering with cars and working the grape harvest gave professor Shadi Dayeh a hands-on foundation that now informs his innovations in brain mapping and potentially vision-restoring whole-eye transplantation.  Read more

Our ECE Department had 4 new faculty elevated to become Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) of 2025: Nuria Gonzalez-Prelcic, Patrick Mercier, Shayan Mookherjea, Tse Nga Ng (from left to right). Read more 

Meet ECE’s newest Full Professor — and returning Triton — Yiorgos Makris (MS ‘97, Ph.D. ‘01), a pioneer in using AI and digital twins to secure the global chip supply chain, design trustworthy hardware, and even protect IP in synthetic biology. From covert wireless channels to next-gen programmable fabrics, his work sits at the cutting edge of secure, intelligent electronics. 

Learn more about his journey back to UC San Diego and his vision for TRELA and the semiconductor ecosystem in SoCal.

Building your own mini robot, “screaming plant,” or balancing beam — even with zero prior experience — Project In a Box is a student-led community turning creative engineering projects into take-home kits for UC San Diego students, K–12 outreach, and family workshops, all while supporting ECE courses and hosting an end-of-year interactive showcase. 

Learn more

From building autonomous soccer robots for RoboCup and award-winning supercomputers to hosting HARD Hack, Robofest, and a reverse career fair, IEEE at UC San Diego is where undergrads level up their skills, networks, and career opportunities. With projects, industry events, socials, and mentorship programs, IEEE is shaping the next generation of well-rounded engineering professionals. 

Learn more

The ECE Alumni Advisory Board is strengthening connections between alumni, students, and faculty through mentorship, community-building, and recognition of excellence.

Alumni are invited to join the 5-month ECE Alumni Mentorship Program (ECE AMP), supporting students’ academic, personal, and career growth with just 1–2 hours a month.

The department also celebrates outstanding alumni through the annual ECE Distinguished Alumni Awards. This year we honored Subhasis Chaudhuri (Ph.D. ’90), Yvonne Hildebrand (MS ’98), and Joseph Ford (Ph.D. ’92).  The Alumni Advisory Board welcomes your nominations for future honorees.

Learn more

(left) Prof. Charles Tu, (right) High school students in the ECE photonics lab as part of COSMOS’ summer program “PhotonQuest: from Everyday Devices to Quantum Frontiers”.

The Charles Tu CORE (Collaborative OutReach and Education) Fund was set up by Prof. Charles Tu  in 2018 when he retired from UC San Diego.  It provides funding for outreach and education efforts by various ECE student orgs, such as IEEE, HKN, SPIE, ACM, the ECE Undergraduate Student Council, and Project in a Box.  The CORE Fund also supports COSMOS (California Summer School on Mathematics and Science), a summer residential program for high school students.  These outreach programs benefit K-12 and undergraduate engineering students who learn from one another.  Outreach inspires the next generation of engineers through positive engagement at an early age by providing opportunities to learn about a future in engineering.

Consider supporting the Charles Tu CORE Fund here.