Electrical and Computer Engineering

The Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department at UC Santa Cruz aims to achieve engineering discoveries that benefit humankind through a combination of curiosity, open-mindedness, and inclusiveness. We aim to provide undergraduate and graduate students with inspiration and quality education, believing that rigor, creativity, and excitement should be part of the Electrical and Computer Engineering curriculum.

Our Electrical Engineering undergraduate program is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, www.abet.org. Learn more about ABET Accreditation.

Research

Learn about the research being conducted within our department.

People

Meet people in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Degrees

Learn about the Graduate and Undergraduate programs in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

#2

public university in the nation for students focused on making an impact in the world (Princeton Review, 2022)

#10

best electrical engineering master's degree school in California (College Factual, 2025)

#2

top public colleges for engineering salaries (Wall Street Journal, 2023)

Predicting seizures with artificial intelligence

An AI-powered method improves seizure prediction by up to 44% over baseline approaches—offering a new way to anticipate changing data.

Read more

ECE research news

Revealing the secrets of the human brain

UC Santa Cruz research innovations and academic programs advance brain and mental health.

ARCS Foundation scholarships support 14 outstanding graduate students in science and engineering for 2025-26

The scholarships are awarded to students who show exceptional promise of making a significant contribution to the scientific and technological strength of the country.

Effort aims to uncover the learning and reasoning potential of brain organoids

The Braingeneers team will test the ability of brain organoids to solve tasks in real time

More ECE news »

Upcoming events

de Priester, J. (ECE) – Hybrid Reinforcement Learning

December 8, 2025

Jack Baskin Engineering

Zhu, R. (ECE) – From Neuromorphic Principles to Efficient Neural Language Architectures

December 9, 2025

Jack Baskin Engineering

BE Climate Connectors

January 15, 2026

Engineering 2

View all events…

Explore potential Electrical and Computer Engineering career paths

• AI Engineer
• Computer Hardware Engineer
• Electrical and Electronics Engineer
• Embedded Systems Engineer
• Robotics Engineer
• Signal Processing Engineer
• Software Engineer
• Systems Engineer
• Telecommunications Engineer

Professor Holger Schmidt gives a tour of his labs and discusses his research in optofluidics. By working together, Schmidt and his UC Santa Cruz colleagues have discovered important biomedical applications for this technology.

Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, Marco Rolandi is researching the use of technological devices to mimic biological processes.

Professor Ricardo Sanfelice and his Hybrid Systems Lab works to develop Cyber Physical Systems that incorporate networks, computers, and physics. applied to aerial vehicles and systems that operate in complex environments.

Learn about Robotics and Control Engineering at UC Santa Cruz

Dejan Milutinović and his graduate students study the control of robotic and autonomous vehicle systems, especially in the presence of uncertainty. The research is multidisciplinary, involving control theory, statistical physics, mathematics and mechanics. In the lab, they can test at a small scale, so there is no need to invest in airplanes and automobiles to test their theories.