Message from the chair

William N. Hitchon (15K JPG)

Our department made a significant effort over the last three years to enhance the quality and broaden the base of its faculty. Faculty cooperation has resulted in a number of successful cross-disciplinary research initiatives. While hires have strengthened some areas, significant losses of faculty have occurred in other areas. Unfortunately we were not successful in recruiting additional high caliber faculty during this past year, leaving our total number of faculty very low. We continue to make hiring outstanding faculty our top priority focusing on candidates with commitments to education, research and technological entrepreneurship.

Our current assistant professors have succeeded in raising unprecedented amounts of research funding and have received very prestigious awards. Charlie Chen and Lei He won NSF Career Awards. Akbar Sayeed won the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Award.

The ECE faculty continues to receive substantial federal and industrial grant support. Research funding is up 20 percent. The year 2000 saw 11 patents granted with 29 disclosures and 13 pending patents.

Several faculty, staff and teaching assistants received excellence in teaching awards during the past year. Christopher DeMarco won the Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Teaching, John Booske and TA Dan Ip won Polygon Teaching Awards, TAs Todd Lynch, Sheila Ross and Chester Wilson won Gerald Holdridge Excellence in Teaching Awards, TAs Karina Carvalho and Jeff Krosschell won Gerald Holdridge Course/Lab Development Awards, and Young Chang Kim won the Harold A. Peterson Graduate Student Paper Award.

Professors Kime and Webster retired this year. Professor Barmish began a leave of absence in spring 2000. On a sad note, Emeritus Professor Harold Peterson passed away.

After some significant decreases in undergraduate enrollment, ECE is seeing significant growth. Last year 587 students enrolled. This renewed student interest is largely due to our new computer engineering degree and the tremendous industrial opportunities currently available to our graduates. After a drop in our graduate population, we are rebounding with 287 students enrolled in fall of 2000 and 335 enrolled in fall of 2001. The ECE Open House was very successful this year due to increased fellowship donations. Thirty-six potential graduate students visited ECE with 20 accepting financial packages to begin graduate studies in Fall 2001.

Through successful competition for state-funded initiatives supplemented by individual and corporate gifts, ECE obtained more than $600,000 in the past three years for improving undergraduate instructional laboratory facilities. We thank all those who donated to ECE through the University of Wisconsin Foundation or through equipment gifts. These donations contribute significantly to our programs and to the education of our students.

We are looking forward to another successful and productive year for our students, staff and faculty.