Welcome to the UCSC Department of Computer Engineering!

We are a department of interdisciplinary system design. We pursue research in four main areas: computer system design (e.g., computer architecture, temperature-aware design automation, low-power memory design), computer networks (e.g., network science, wireless networks and the Internet), robotics and control (e.g., autonomous vehicles, biomedical robotics, biomolecular control), and sensing and interaction (e.g., computer vision, human-computer interaction, assistive and rehabilitative technology). Our research page includes links to these areas and associated laboratories.

We have an amazing group of faculty, students, and researchers. During the past year alone, Professor Dunbar received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, our department received nearly $5M in grants and gifts, three of our published papers received best paper awards, and our faculty served in many leadership roles in IEEE and ACM conferences and journals.

Our research and degree programs are all about teamwork.  We solve research problems by bringing together undergraduate and graduate students in computer engineering with  other engineering programs, natural science and social science programs, and at other universities and in industry.  Projects include designing computers that reduce electricity use, developing monitoring systems for the ocean and wildlife, inventing systems to help individuals with visual impairments, creating the new infrastructure for scale-free networks, determining the fundamental limits of wireless networks, building biomedical robots for rehabilitation and surgery, integrating sensors and systems in autonomous vehicles that travel on land, on sea, and through the air, and applying control and custom computing to control a single molecule of DNA.

Computer engineering began as a department almost 25 years ago, and has continuously been an incubator and innovator of new programs.  Beyond our BS (ABET-accredited since 1988), MS, and PhD programs in computer engineering, the department and its faculty have led development of UCSC’s first Silicon Valley degree program, the MS in CE/Network Engineering, information systems management, the Baskin School of Engineering, and programs in bioinformatics and bioengineering. We also lead the Baskin School’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program, SURF-IT.

Our department emphasizes community, and we have helped undergraduate and graduate students create new groups and revitalize old ones.  We have launched three Baskin School groups, including the graduate student, post-doc, and faculty group eWomen, and our undergraduate chapters of Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society, and the Society of Women Engineers. Computer engineering faculty and students take active roles in all Baskin School organizations.  We are also developing a new live-and-learn community at Crown College for engineering undergraduates, with scholarship aid from the National Science Foundation.  If you would like to start a new organization or see a new need, please let us know how to help!

Thank you for visiting our department of computer engineering at the Baskin School!  Please do not hesitate to contact undergraduate advising, graduate advising, and me directly with any questions.

J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves
Chair and Baskin Professor of Computer Engineering