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

March 19, 2026

As we continue celebrating ECE’s 60th anniversary, I’m pleased to share Winter quarter thoughts and news.

A defining challenge of this era is how to engage productively with the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. ECE is meeting this challenge through creativity in teaching and assessment practices, introducing new courses that explore AI’s applications and its human dimensions, and examining how evaluations can authentically capture student learning in an AI-enabled world.  A survey of students found that many use AI tools frequently to clarify course concepts, and believe it improves academic performance, but also worry about over-reliance on AI and find it hard to tell if AI-generated answers are correct.  A survey of faculty found that many increasingly rely on verified learning assessments (closed-book, in-class exams and quizzes, oral exams or presentations), while homework is often reduced in weight or treated as practice only.

In January, the AI theme was central to our San Diego Wireless Summit entitled "Wireless Intelligence: Bridging Physical Systems & Human-Centric AI" and also to our productive meeting of the ECE Industry Advisory Board, where industry partners’ feedback on workforce needs will help us further align our curriculum and research with emerging technologies shaping the landscape.

ECE continues to be increasingly attractive to undergrads, with the largest percentage year-on-year uptick in Fall 2026 applications of any department on campus, both for first-years and transfers.

In a first-ever for UC San Diego, I am delighted to share that Professor Abdoulaye Ndao has been elected a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences—a well-deserved recognition of his groundbreaking research and international impact. Read more here.  He was also just named a Kavli Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences.

As we approach our formal 60th anniversary celebration on Friday, April 10, 2026, I invite you to join us in honoring six decades of innovation and community, as we continue to prepare our students and research for the exciting, AI-driven transformations ahead.

Warm regards,

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

Congratulations to Team Sea++ (part of our IEEE student chapter), for securing 3rd place worldwide and 1st place in the US at the 2025 Student Cluster Competition (SCC25) in St. Louis! The team spent months designing and optimizing a small supercomputing cluster to handle complex scientific workloads in real time. Learn more

The ECE Undergraduate Student Council had a busy quarter professionally (lab tours of Prof. Ng's Flexible & Printable Electronics lab and Prof. Le’s Power Integrated Circuits lab, and a tour of General Atomics' plasma center) and socially (roller skating night, movie night). Please contact eceusc@ucsd.edu if you can offer our students a company tour and exposure to new areas. Learn more

Led primarily by ECE students, TritonBots will represent UCSD at the RoboCup 2026 World Event in Incheon, South Korea, from June 30th to July 6th. Competing in the Small Size League (SSL), the team will deploy a squad of six highly agile, autonomous robots in a 6-on-6 soccer match. These robots, designed and built by our students, utilize advanced computer vision and wireless coordination to execute complex maneuvers. 

We wish the team the best of luck!

Prof. Nuria González-Prelcic joined ECE in 2024 as a Full Professor. Named an IEEE Fellow in 2024, she studies the integration of sensing, learning, and communication, enabling wireless networks that not only deliver connectivity but also provide sensing services and leverage environmental awareness to enhance network performance.

Learn more about her research and her recent Proceedings of the IEEE article on integrated sensing and communication, recognized as one of the journal’s most downloaded papers of 2025.

Andrew Kahng is part of major national initiatives that are transforming how future engineers learn to design and build computer chips. His work is helping UC San Diego become a driving force in the nation’s growing semiconductor innovation ecosystem. Learn More.

A novel interferometric modal splitting method, introduced by Profs. Noah Rubin and Shaya Fainman, separates polarization states using signal processing rather than physical components, enabling an on-chip spectrometer that operates across very wide spectral bandwidths. Learn more.

Prof. Pengtao Xie’s lab trains artificial intelligence systems to more reliably solve complex problems that require interpreting both text and images; his models outperformed others in solving math word problems containing images such as charts and diagrams. Learn More.

A team led by Professor Yatish Tutakhia has developed a new data structure and compression technique that enables the field of pangenomics to handle unprecedented scales of genetic information. Learn More.

Taught by Assistant Professor Yuanyuan Shi in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, a new graduate course at UCSD is helping students bridge the worlds of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and power engineering.

ECE 285: Data Science and AI for Smart Grids introduces students to modern AI techniques, including Agentic AI and large language models (LLMs), while grounding them in the fundamentals of electric power systems.

Learn more

The ECE Alumni Mentorship Program (ECE AMP) kicked off in January! The 5-month-long program connects ECE alumni with undergraduate and graduate students to build the skills and connections needed to navigate their careers with confidence. If you are interested in contributing or getting involved, please get in touch with us at ece-amp@ucsd.edu.

ECE AMP will hold an annual picnic gathering on Saturday, May 30th, 2026, from 11 AM to 2 PM PST at Doyle Park. You'll have the chance to meet fellow alumni, ECE faculty, and student organization leaders while enjoying food and drinks.

This picnic is free to attend, and you are encouraged to bring the family. Please RSVP by May 25th, 2026, so we can get an accurate headcount. We hope to see you there!

The Bhaskar D. Rao Ph.D. Teaching Support Endowment Fund was established by Professor Bhaskar D. Rao to prepare the next generation of educators in electrical and computer engineering by helping Ph.D. students develop and strengthen their teaching skills as they prepare for academic careers.

The fund provides support for teaching mentorship opportunities, for Ph.D. students to participate in teaching skill development courses, programs, and conferences, and expanded opportunities for Ph.D. students to gain practical teaching experience in core subject areas. 

For more information or to donate to the endowment fund, please click this link.