Computer Engineering

PhD students must pass a departmental qualifying examination to determine admissibility to the doctoral program and any technical weaknesses. Once admitted, students must identify an interdisciplinary field of study, a dissertation director, and an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Committee before completion of 18 credits of coursework. A formal plan of study that is acceptable to the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Committee is also required. The plan of study must have at least 48 credits of coursework, of which 42 credits must be at the 600 and 700 level and of which 6 credits may be special topics or 500 level courses. At least 24 of these course credits must be completed at UA. The minimum total credit hours for the doctoral program is 96.

The PhD program also requires students both to pass a candidacy examination to test the student’s ability to conduct independent research, and to present an acceptable Dissertation Proposal that describes the proposed research to the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Committee. The dissertation must be successfully defended to the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Committee. A copy of the PhD in Engineering Program Procedures may be obtained from the office of the Dean of the College of Engineering (refer to contact info).

Admission Requirements

Applicants for graduate studies in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering must hold a bachelor

Akron Advantage

In addition to ECE computing facilities, which include a wide variety of the latest networked computers, workstations and servers, college and university computing facilities are available for graduate student work and research. These include IBM, DEC Alpha 600/AU Tru64 Unix, and other Unix-based systems, all of which have network connections. ECE computer facilities feature the software typically required for ECE teaching and research. In addition to modern and well-equipped teaching laboratories, ECE maintains a number of specialized laboratories dedicated to graduate research: Applied magnetics and nondestructive testing lab, control research lab, power electronics and motion control lab, pervasive automation lab.