Engineering program sees ranking in top 16th percent

Electrical engineers involved in industry leading research

By: Mickey Clark

Posted: 4/11/07

On April 9, U.S. News and World Report magazine published a ranked list of America's top graduate schools. Oregon State University was ranked fifty-fourth in the electrical engineering category, among the top sixteenth percentile.

Each year, the magazine ranks graduate school programs in the categories of education, engineering, business, law and medicine.

The ranks are derived from two sets of data. The first is gathered by asking deans, program directors and senior faculty to judge the quality of academic programs on a scale from one (denoting marginal) to five (outstanding).

The second is a set of statistics that measures the quality of faculty, students and the research performed by each program. The data for these five areas was surveyed from more than 1,200 programs and around 9,600 academics and professionals in fall of 2005.

Since the previous academic year, OSU's rank has improved from 61 to 54.

"There's a lot of creativity and innovation in the program," said Terri Fiez, director of the electrical engineering program.

In particular, the school has incorporated the TekBots undergraduate program, which has made OSU a leader "in terms of undergraduate education," Fiez said.

"We've got some really top researchers who are visible and a lot of grad students participating."

In the Kelly Engineering Center labs, graduate student Sunwoo Kwon said there has been some visible activity for the program, such as articles featured in the Journal of Solid State, an industry-leading publication.

"I would say the program is doing superbly," Kwon said.

The electrical engineering program has been noteworthy for work done by a group of six faculty - Karti Mayaram, Un-Ku Moon, Gabor Temes, Patrick Chiang, Pavan Hanumolu, Terri Fiez - and about 50 to 60 graduate students in the area of mixed-signal integrated circuit design.

The program is among the top five of this type in the nation. The work they do is significant in electronic devices such as cell phones and pacemakers.

Funding for the mixed-signal work is provided by numerous large companies such as Intel, Texas Instruments, National Semiconductor, Analog Devices, Samsung and others.

"It's one of the best in the whole country," said Tawfiq Musah, a graduate student studying electrical engineering. "The research is state-of-the-art."

Although the program has been successful, electrical engineering graduate student Nema Talebbeydohkti said there are areas the school is not focusing on that need improvement.

"Areas like microwave, semiconductors and digital need more focus," Talebbeydohkti said. "[Whereas] analog and mixed signal are getting lots."