Pratt School of Engineering

Prospective Undergrads

ECE graduate John Cornwell developed a robot fridge to toss him a beer--and landed a spot on the Late Show with David Letterman. <a mce_thref="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SROv1wB8X7Y">Watch the YouTube video.</a>Satellite communications, radio, television, cellphones, computers, airplanes, space vehicles, automobiles, children's toys, refrigerators and heaters, office machinery and home appliances, life-saving medical equipment and Martian battles fought with joysticks represent a just a few of the now familiar facets of our lives made possible by engineers, technologists and technicians. In our age of global computer networks, the challenges and opportunities in the elecrtrical and computer engineering profession continue to expand.

Have you ever thought about developing autonomous robot behaviors to drive through the Gobi desert? Building robots capable of planning and interacting? Developing real-world cloaking materials? Developing the next generation of digital camera?

Electrical and computer engineering could be the the career for you!

Check It Out

Nov 15, 2011
Duke Recognizes National Academy of Engineering Members
On November 4, Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering unveiled a new awards wall honoring the 23 alumni and faculty who have been elected to the National...
Sep 14, 2011
An Entrepreneurial Journey to Google
As a self-professed nerd in college, Richard Alfonsi (ECE ’93) is now probably at the coolest place there is to work – Google – and in probably one...
Jun 29, 2011
New Smartphone App Automatically Tags Photos
DURHAM, N.C. -- So much for tagging photographs with names, locations and activities yourself – a new cell phone application can take care of that...

What are Duke electrical and computer engineers doing?

Our faculty are conducting exciting research that changes people lives - in fact, there are few areas of our daily lives that are not influenced by electrical and computer engineers. Read through our research pages to explore architecture and networking; biological/medical applications; circuits & systems; nanosystems, devices & materials; quantum computing & photonics; sensing & signals; and waves and metamaterials.

Our faculty is committed to engaging undergraduates in their research programs, and constantly strive to update course materials to keep our students at the forefront of their electrical and computer field of interest.

Example Program: Why not develop a Virtual Information Telescope? 

Modern phones are being equipped with numerous sensors such as cameras, microphones, GPS, accelerometers, and health monitors. Assistant Professor Romit Roy Chourhury is designing a "Virtual Information Telescope," where the "lenses" of the telescope are metaphors for the sensors in people's mobile phones. Using such a telescope, an Internet user will be able to zoom into any part of the populated world, and observe events of interest. Users will be able to direct queries to phones located in a given region, and receive real-time responses through automatic sensing or explicit human participation. Example domains that may benefit from this platform include education, healthcare, tourism, disaster management, environment conservation, and social collaborations. Perhaps more fundamentally, a virtual information telescope may change the way we browse, query, learn, and process information. Interested in more information? Check out the Micro-Blog website at http://synrg.ee.duke.edu/microblog.html

Example Program: Detect landmines or help people hear?

One of the study concentrations offered within the Electrical and Computer Engineering program at Duke is Signal Processing. In Dr. Leslie Collins’ SSPACISS laboratory, signal processing is used in a wide variety of applications including subsurface sensing, or landmine detection, unexploded ordinance detection, analysis of brain-computer interface data, gun shot detection and classification, and cochlear implant research.

In addition to signal processing and data analysis, members of the SSPACISS lab also participate in experimental design and implementation. Pictured here is a cochlear implant user participating in a study in the lab that is aimed at improving speech recognition in noisy environments and music perception. Subjects that come to the lab for testing perform psychophysical tasks that are used to better understand the perceptual responses to different types of electrical stimuli, and then data from those tasks are used to tune sound processing strategies to each specific subject. These tuned strategies are then evaluated through a variety of speech and music tasks, and subjects are given the opportunity to provide feedback about the algorithms. More information on cochlear implant research at Duke, as well as the other areas of signal processing research that go on in Dr. Collins’ lab may be found on the SSPACISS website: http://www.ee.duke.edu/research/collins/

Or, check out these posters created by sophomores working with Dr. Collins. Using Acoustic Models for Sound Localization with Bilateral Cochlear Implants, and Computational Models for Nerve Responses to Electrical Stimulation.