This year, we celebrate 120 years of the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering!

ECE120 Events

Turing Lecture with Bob Metcalfe

Tuesday, October 17th
12:00 PM - 2:30 PM
EER Mulva Auditorium

Bob Metcalfe, professor emeritus in the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, was named the recipient of the 2022 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) A.M. Turing Award for the invention, standardization and commercialization of Ethernet. Join us as Bob presents his Turing Lecture Series with a reception to follow.

Texas ECE - History on Display

RESCHEDULED FOR SPRING 2024

Join the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in celebrating 120 years of excellence! We're thrilled to present a Texas ECE history museum experience, featuring faculty presentations that showcase the remarkable journey we've undertaken. This is a momentous occasion, and we invite ECE alumni, current and former faculty members, and the broader ECE community to come together and commemorate the legacy of our prestigious department!

Texas ECE Inaugural Alumni Tailgate
Texas vs. BYU

Saturday, October 28th
Kickoff time TBA. Tailgate opens 2 hours before kickoff.
GLT Plaza • 2400 Speedway

The Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering will be hosting it's first Texas ECE Alumni Tailgate this fall. Food, drinks and games for the whole family! We hope to see you there!

ECE120 Alumni Event in the Bay Area
In partnership with Google

Monday, October 30th
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Google Cloud Campus 237 Moffett Park Dr, Sunnyvale, CA 94089

In partnership with Google, join the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in celebrating 120 years of excellence! We're thrilled to present a Texas ECE history museum experience, featuring presentations that showcase the remarkable journey we've undertaken. This is a momentous occasion, and we invite ECE alumni, current and former faculty members, and the broader ECE community to come together and commemorate the legacy of our prestigious department! Limited space available! RSVP by October 15th!

We will celebrate ECE120 with a series of special events including a ECE120 celebration Museum Exhibit. if you have photos or items you would like to share, contact us.

Department History

The Department of Engineering was first established on January 17, 1895. In 1903, the School of Electrical Engineering opened, along with Civil Engineering and Mining Engineering, as the first three departments in the College of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. The curriculum focused on electrical power systems: power plant operation, transmission, and management of utility systems. In recognition of the growing importance and influence of digital computers in the engineering profession, the name of the department was changed to "The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering" in 1983. 

The ECE Department has always provided a challenging curriculum. The College's first dean of engineering, Thomas U. Taylor, boasted "there are practically no options, no electives, no lines of resistance, and no substitutions - nothing but the straight and narrow path of the grindstone of the beehive." From this philosophy, technological developments were incorporated into the instruction procedures that allowed the department to successfully advance studies on hydraulics and turbine-driven generating stations, metal fatigue, electrochemistry, psychometrics, and refrigeration.

By 1936, more than 18,000 miles of high-tension lines crisscrossed Texas. In the 1940's, the department incorporated classes on electronics, communication by radio and television, and microwave propagation. In the beginning, the department received research money primarily from government sources, resulting in the establishment of the Electrical Engineering Research Laboratory (EERL). Researchers at the EERL focused on microwave transmission of radio signals, applications of radar, and microelectronics. Their groundbreaking research efforts produced radio telescopes, a development that the Associated Press termed as one of the three most significant American accomplishments of that century. 

In 1947, Edith Clarke joined Texas ECE, becoming the the first female professor of electrical engineering in the country. She taught for 10 years and retired in 1957. Edith Clarke was the first female engineer to achieve professional standing in Tau Beta Pi. In 1948, Clarke was the first female Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. She was the first woman to be accepted as a full voting member in the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

By the 1960's, the EE curriculum included courses on analytical methods, biomedical electronics, fields and waves, management and production, physical electronics, information science, power systems and energy conversion, and computer systems. During this time, the department broadened its constituency to include working professionals in the field and focused aggressively on attracting minority and female students to the major. Two older labs were merged to create the Applied Research Laboratory (ARL). Research at the ARL contributed to the development of geodetic positioning systems, the underwater acoustics used in modern oceanography, and improved methods of data management, data analysis, and signal processing.  The ARL was also the genesis of Tracor and National Instruments, which were both founded by ARL researchers. 

In the 1970's, funds from the Cockrell family, government sources, and industry allowed the department to hire some of the most prestigious names in academia.  The first silicon transistor was created at Texas Instruments by Gordon Teal and the late ECE Professor Emeritus Willis Adcock. Jack Kilby, who invented the integrated circuit, also reported to Dr. Adcock. 

In October 2019, professor John Goodenough was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry “for the development of lithium-ion batteries.”

In Spring 2020, Diana Marculescu became the first woman to serve as chair of Texas ECE.

In the past few years, Texas ECE has joined or started several initiatives to remain on the cutting edge of electrical and computing engineering research including the Intelligent Machine Engineering Consortium (IMAGINE), Texas Computing, Texas Robotics, the Machine Learning Laboratory, the TRIPODS Data Science Institute, and the UT Austin-Amazon Science Hub. 

In 2022, the department took another leap forward and was renamed the Chandra Family of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering thanks to the generous contributions of Texas ECE Distinguished Alumnus Sanjay Chandra.

In March 2023, professor Bob Metcalfe received the 2022 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) A.M. Turing Award, often called the “Nobel Prize of computing,” for the invention, standardization and commercialization of Ethernet. 

Texas ECE is consistently ranked one of the top 10 ECE programs and has the second most number of awarded ECE undergraduate degrees in the United States. Its faculty, students, and alumni have made significant contributions to human knowledge and its practical applications. Texas ECE has adapted to change, while maintaining a rigorous curriculum and actively preparing for the future in the field of engineering.