Electrical Engineering

Why Earn Your EngScD in Electrical Engineering at Columbia?

Columbia gives you a rigorous Ivy League education in the heart of a vibrant global city for unmatched opportunities and impact.

As a student, you’ll benefit from:

  • New York City
    Join top talent in one of the world’s most exciting and influential cities. Students choose Columbia Engineering over MIT, Berkeley, and others because of the New York City ecosystem of research and enterprise that can’t be found anywhere else. 
     
  • Diverse Multidisciplinary Research Opportunities
    Solving humanity’s most difficult challenges requires input from many disciplines. Join experts from other fields in research institutions like Columbia Nano Initiative, Data Science Institute, and the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. 
     
  • World-Class Faculty
    Join a department of accomplished scholars and passionate instructors engaged in cutting-edge research in areas like nanoscale photonics for extreme data transfer efficiency, next-generation electrical energy infrastructure, and brain-computer interfaces. 
     
  • Columbia University
    With a PhD from Columbia, you’ll join one of the world’s most international, accomplished networks of researchers and alumni. Your Ivy League credential will open doors wherever you go and the relationships you build here will accelerate your career. 

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Why Earn Your MS/PhD in Electrical Engineering at Columbia?

Columbia gives you a rigorous Ivy League education in the heart of a vibrant global city for unmatched opportunities and impact.

As a student, you’ll benefit from:

  • New York City
    Join top talent in one of the world’s most exciting and influential cities. Students choose Columbia Engineering over MIT, Berkeley, and others because of the New York City ecosystem of research and enterprise that can’t be found anywhere else. 
     
  • Diverse Multidisciplinary Research Opportunities
    Solving humanity’s most difficult challenges requires input from many disciplines. Join experts from other fields in research institutions like Columbia Nano Initiative, Data Science Institute, and the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. 
     
  • World-Class Faculty
    Join a department of accomplished scholars and passionate instructors engaged in cutting-edge research in areas like nanoscale photonics for extreme data transfer efficiency, next-generation electrical energy infrastructure, and brain-computer interfaces. 
     
  • Columbia University
    With a PhD from Columbia, you’ll join one of the world’s most international, accomplished networks of researchers and alumni. Your Ivy League credential will open doors wherever you go and the relationships you build here will accelerate your career. 

See Full Program Details

Research Areas

  • Analog Devices
  • Integrated Circuits and Systems
  • Nanoelectronics
  • Very Large-Scale Integration (VLSI)
  • Neuromorphic Computing
  • Ultra-low Power Electronics for Sensory and Cognitive Hardware and the Internet of Things
  • Efficient Implementation of Next-G Wireless Communications Systems: Multi-antenna, Cognitive Radio, Ultra-wideband Pulse Radio
  • Design of Analog and RF Integrated Circuits in Nanoscale CMOS Technologies
  • Design of Ultra-low Voltage and Ultra-low Power Analog and RF Circuits

Additional Information

  • Professional Affiliations
    • IEEE, Fellow
  • Honors & Awards
    • Fellow, IEEE, 2011
    • Inaugural Recipient of the “IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Innovative Education Award” (Feb. 2020)
    • Co-recipient of “Best Student Paper Award – 3rd Place” at the 2018 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium for “An 8-Element, 1-3GHz Direct Space-to-Information Converter for Rapid, Compressive-Sampling Direction-of-Arrival Finding Utilizing Pseudo-Random Antenna-Weight Modulation” (with Matt Bajor)
    • Co-recipient “Best Demo Award” at the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on the Internet of Things Design and Implementation (IoTDI) for “An Ultra-Low-Power Custom Integrated Circuit based Sound-Source Localization System” (with D. de Godoy, S. Xia, W. Fernandez, X. Jiang)
    • Co-recipient “Outstanding Student Paper – Runner up (2nd place)” at the 2017 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) for “A-236.3dB FoM Sub-Sampling Low-Jitter Supply-Robust Ring-Oscillator PLL for Clocking Applications with Feed-Forward Noise-Cancellation,” April 2018 (with S. Nagam)
    • Co-recipient “Best Poster Award” at the 2015 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) for "A Field-Programmable Noise-Canceling Wideband Receiver with High-Linearity Hybrid Class-AB-C LNTAs,” Sept. 2015 (with J. Zhu)
    • Co-recipient of the “Best Demo – Runner Up Award” at 14th ACM Conference on Embedded Network Sensor Systems (SenSys) Nov. 2016, (with R. Chandrasekaran, D. de Godoy, S. Xia, M. Islam, B. Islam, S. Nirjon, and X. Jiang)
    • Co-recipient of “Best Student Paper Award – 2nd Place” at the 2015 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium (with Yang Xu)
    • Co-recipient of the “Student Poster Award 2nd Place” for “Metacapacitor: Large Area, Low Cost, High Performance Capacitors for Power Electronics,” FlexTech Alliance Conference, Feb. 2014 (with S. Yang, B. Van Tassell, C. Le, S. Liu, E. S. Leland, D. A. Steingart, S. O'Brien, and I. Kymissis)
    • Co-recipient of the “First Prize ($100K) in the 2012 Interdigital Innovation Challenge (I2C)” for “Ultrasonic Wireless Sensors” (with K. Yadav and I. Kymissis)
    • Co-recipient of the “2011 IEEE Communications Society Award for Advances in Communication” for an outstanding paper published in any IEEE Communications Society publication in the previous 15 years for the paper entitled “Energy-Harvesting Active Networked Tags (EnHANTs) for Ubiquitous Object Networking,” (with M. Gorlatova, I. Kymissis, D. Rubenstein, X. Wang and G. Zussman)
    • Co-recipient of the “Best Student Demo Award” for "Demo: Organic Solar Cell-equipped Energy Harvesting Active Networked Tag (EnHANT) Prototypes" at the ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys) 2011 (with G. Stanje, P. Miller, J. Zhu, A. Smith, O. Winn, R. Margolies, M. Gorlatova, J. Sarik, M. Szczodrak, B. Vigraham, L. Carloni, I. Kymissis, and G. Zussman)
    • Co-recipient of the “First Prize in the 2009 Vodafone Americas Foundation Wireless Innovation Challenge” for “Active Networked Tags for Disaster Recovery Applications” (with G. Zussman, I. Kymissis, D. Rubenstein and X. Wang)
    • Co-recipient of “Best Student Paper Award – 1st Place” at the 2008 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium (with F. Zhang and R. Gharpurey).
    • IBM Faculty Award (March 2005)
    • Award for the ‘Best Engineering thesis of Applied Sciences for the class of 1990’ (1 award among 360 students) at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) granted by the class of 1965 (Oct. 1990).
  • Professional Experience
    • (July 2016 – present) Bernard J. Lechner Professor of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York (NY, USA).
    • (July 2017 – June 2020) Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York (NY, USA).
    • (July 2011 – June 2016) Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York (NY, USA).
    • (July 2014 – June 2016) Vice Chair of Faculty Affairs, Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York (NY, USA).
    • (July 2011 – July 2014) Director of Graduate Programs, Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York (NY, USA).
    • (Oct. 2012 – 2014) Founding (co-)Chair of the Smart Cities Center in the Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering, Columbia University, New York (NY, USA).
    • (Sept. 2010 – Aug. 2011) Visiting Research Professor, Institut ICTEAM, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain la Neuve (Belgium).
    • (July 2002 – June 2011) Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York (NY, USA) [Tenure July 2008].
    • (April 2002 - June 2002)Principal Engineer at Multilink Corporation, Somerset (NJ, USA).
    • (Sept. 2000 - Jan. 2002) Director, VLSI in the ‘VLSI and Integrated Electro-optics Group’ of Celight Inc., Iselin (NJ, USA).
    • (July 1999 - August 2000) Senior Staff Scientist in the ‘Analog and RF Microelectronics Group’ of Broadcom Corporation, Irvine (CA, USA).
    • (Oct. 1996 - June 1999) Member of Technical Staff (Principal Investigator) in the ‘Design Principles Research Department’ of the ‘Wireless Laboratory’ at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill (NJ, USA).
    • (Sept. 1991 - Sept. 1996) Research assistant in the ESAT-MICAS laboratory of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven (Belgium).
    • (Sept. 1990 - Aug. 1991) Belgian military service at the “Technical Department of the Army”, Peutie (Belgium).
    • (Spring 1998 and 2002) Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York (NY, USA).
  • Education
    • PhD, Electrical Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
    • Ir, Electo-Mechanical Engineering, option Electronics, B.S./M.S. equivalent, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)

Research Areas

  • Analog Devices
  • Communications
  • Electromagnetics
  • Integrated Circuits and Systems
  • Nanoelectronics
  • Networking
  • Photonics
  • Very Large-Scale Integration (VLSI)
  • Quantum Computing

Additional Information

  • Professional Experience
    • Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, 2015–present
    • Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, 2009–2014
  • Professional Affiliations
    • Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
  • Honor & Awards
    • DARPA Microelectronics Exploratory Council Member
    • 2017-2019 IEEE SSCS Distinguished Lecturer
    • 2018 IEEE RFIC Symposium Best Student Paper Award
    • 2018 IEEE ISSCC Best Demo Award
    • 2015 IEEE RFIC Symposium Best Student Paper Award
    • 2014 IBM Faculty Award
    • 2011 DARPA Young Faculty Award
    • USC Viterbi School of Engineering 2009 Best Thesis Award – Experimental Research Category
    • IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2007 Lewis Winner Award for Outstanding Paper

Research Areas

  • Control Systems
  • Information Theory
  • Power Systems
  • Signal Processing
  • Smart Electric Energy (Smart Grids)
  • Stochastic Processes
  • Cybersecurity
  • Electric Vehicles
  • Renewable Energy
  • Robotics and Automation
  • Machine Learning
  • Optimization
  • Data Science
  • Computational Mathematics

Additional Information

  • Professional Experience
    • Senior postdoctoral scholar, Caltech, 2017-2019
    • Junior Research Fellow, St John's College, University of Oxford, 2012-2016
  • Education
    • DPhil, Engineering Science, University of Oxford

Research Areas

  • Networks and Distributed Systems
  • Edge Computing
  • Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0
  • Networked and Distributed Systems
  • Wireless, Embedded & Sensor Systems
  • Communications
  • Networking
  • Power Systems
  • Smart Electric Energy (Smart Grids)
  • Wireless Communication
  • Networking
  • Internet of Things (IoT)

Additional Information

  • Honors & Awards
    • Knesset (Israeli Parliament) award for distinguished students
    • Marie Curie Outgoing International Fellowship, 2014-2016
    • NSF CAREER Award, 2010
    • DTRA Young Investigator Award, 2009
    • Fulbright Fellowship, 2004-2005