ECSE Commencement Reception

A Commencement Reception will be held on Thursday, May 23rd from 4:00 to 6:00 pm at the Fireside Lounge at the Hilton Garden Inn located on Hoosick Street, Troy and will include a brief program.

During the reception, we will hold a brief ceremony to present Department honors and awards. This year's reception will include hot and cold hors d' oeuvres, wine, beer, and soda.

The reception is free to the Graduate and one guest. Additional tickets may be purchased for $25 each.

All reservations must be received by Monday, May 6th, 2013. Reception tickets must be picked up at JEC 6049 between 2 and 4 p.m. Mon-Thursday.
»» Read More

The Grainger Scholars Award Program

The Grainger Scholars Award is given annually in the amount of $7,500 for Junior and Senior Undergraduates and $10,000 for Graduate Students. Eligible students must have a concentration in energy sources and systems, especially electric power. Read More »»

ECSE alum becomes VP of Texas Instruments

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alum Brian Glinsman was recently named vice president of the multicore processors division at Texas Instruments (TI)

In this role, Glinsman is responsible for TI’s high-performance multicore processor product lines for the fixed and mobile infrastructure market, including base stations, media gateways and core networking applications as well as new markets such as mission critical, industrial automation, embedded vision, high performance computing, medical imaging and audio and video infrastructure. Read More »»

ECSE Professor Lester Gerhardt Honored by ASEE

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor Lester Gerhardt last month received the prestigious Benjamin Garver Lamme Award and Medal from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). The ASEE applauded Gerhardt for his "combined contributions to the art of teaching, contributions to research and technical literature, and achievements that contribute to the advancement of the profession of engineering college administration." Awarded since 1928, the Benjamin Garver Lamme Award is regarded as the highest honor bestowed by the ASEE.

Read More »»

RPI Students Launch Unique Weather Balloon

ECSE senior Greg Pitner and the RPI Students for the Exploration and the Development of Space club successfully launched a unique weather balloon 90,000 feet into the atmosphere from the '86 field. The balloon payload contained three high-definition cameras to capture the Earth's entire horizon and some electronics to help the group track the balloon's descent back to earth.

Please visit the club web site at http://seds.union.rpi.edu/

Read local news coverage.
Troy Record, YNN (Video), CBS6Albany (Video)

For a must-see 360° video of the event click here: http://www.rpi.edu/news/video/spaceballoon/

Analog Devices, Inc. donates $100,000 in support of the Douglas Mercer '77 Laboratory for Student Exploration and Innovation

The Department is pleased to announce that Analog Devices, Inc. has made a very generous $100,000 donation in support of the Douglas Mercer '77 Laboratory for Student Exploration and Innovation. (A previous story on the Mercer Endowment appears below.) This gift from Analog Devices as Founding Corporate Sponsor significantly advances our progress toward bringing this state of the art laboratory for independent student projects and competitions to life. The lab will be built in JEC 6204; the grand opening is planned for the start of Fall Semester 2012. 

ECSE Graduate Dr. B. Jayant Baliga has been awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation

On September 27, 2011, President Barack Obama named five inventors as recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation and seven eminent researchers as recipients of the National Medal of Science, the highest honors bestowed by the United States government on scientists, engineers, and inventors. The recipients will receive their awards at a White House ceremony later this year.

Dr. B. Jayant Baliga received his MS '71 and Ph.D '74 in electrical engineering from RPI. Currently a professor at North Carolina State, he developed the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor which has had an extensive impact in transportation, lighting, medicine, defense, and renewable energy systems.

Read More »»

Doug Mercer '77 to endow "The Douglas Mercer '77 Laboratory for Student Exploration and Innovation"

I am so pleased to tell you that Doug Mercer '77 has signed the documents to endow "The Douglas Mercer '77 Laboratory for Student Exploration and Innovation" at $500,000, together with a $50,000 expendable gift to begin equipping the laboratory.

This facility will support student projects in an open shop environment, allowing students to tinker and move class design projects (or whatever else fires them up) to real, working hardware. But beyond that, the lab will promote competitive innovation and student participation in electronics design competitions (or other competitions that include an electronics design element).

The lab will provide infrastructure and consumable supplies, faculty and staff guidance and referral, external linkages, interface with competition organizers, travel and exhibit transport, publicity, and a diverse array of other activities necessary to compete and win. The visibility gained from participating in some of these competitions can reap significant rewards; winning can vault an institution to national prominence in a given field. Competitions provide a rich medium in which to grow the national and global engineering leaders of the future, leaders we want to come from Rensselaer.

ECSE Student Benjamin Clough has been named the winner of the 2011 $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Rensselaer Student Prize

A student in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer, Clough has demonstrated a promising, cost-effective technique that employs sound waves to boost the effective distance of terahertz spectroscopy from a few feet to several meters. For this innovation, Clough has been named the winner of the 2011 $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Rensselaer Student Prize. He is among the four 2011 $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prize winners. Read More»»

Two of this year's three finalists (Tristan Lawry and Ben Clough) are from ECSE.

Lemelson-MIT Rensselaer Student Prize»»

Important Curriculum Changes for ECSE

The Electrical Engineering and Computer and Systems Engineering programs have significant changes which take effect in Fall 2011 (pdf).

Students in all class years will be affected by these changes.

It is important to read the Advising section of this site before registering for your fall classes. Read More »»