Message from the Chair

William N. Hitchon (15K JPG)

I hope this latest edition of the UW-Madison ECE NEWS finds you well. First, on a sad note, I regret to inform you that Professor Henry Guckel passed away on June 5, 2000, after a short illness. Henry joined our department in 1970 and created an outstanding teaching laboratory and research program, which is internationally recognized as a center of excellence. The Henry Guckel Memorial Scholarship Fund is being set up through the University of Wisconsin Foundation. A memorial article later in this newsletter describes his career and how to contribute to the scholarship fund. He is sorely missed.

Over the last three years, we have strived to enhance the quality and broaden the base of our faculty. Faculty cooperation has resulted in a number of successful cross-disciplinary research initiatives, including the communications, computer, and electromagnetics areas. We will continue to encourage these cooperative efforts.

We recently received several large donations to help recruit graduate students and faculty from Peter R. Schneider, the family of Claude and Dora Richardson, John & Tashia Morgridge, and Donald & Ester Procknow. We need to further augment our funding pool to support our best students and help recruit the best graduate students.

Through successful competition for State-funded initiatives supplemented by individual and corporate gifts, the ECE faculty has obtained more than $800,000 in recent years for improving undergraduate laboratories. Some of the labs that have benefited from this funding are the Introductory and Advanced Embedded Systems Labs, the Digital Control and Instrumentation Lab, the Optoelectronics Lab, the Biomedical Engineering Lab, the Introductory Lab, the Power Electronics Lab and the Transmission Lines and Networks Lab.

The ECE faculty has continued to receive substantial federal and industrial grant support. Our research funding has increased by 22 percent which is a testimonial to the entrepreneurial spirit of our faculty. After some significant losses in undergraduate enrollment, we are now seeing significant growth. We believe this renewed interest is largely due to our new computer engineering degree program and the tremendous industrial opportunities currently available to our graduates. Although our graduate enrollment dropped a little recently, it is also beginning to rebound.

As we look to the coming year, we are continuing to work on curriculum for our new BS degree in computer engineering. We also hope to hire several new faculty in key areas. We are in strong competition with both industry and other universities for the best doctoral graduates in these fields.

We are looking forward to another successful and productive year.