USC Viterbi Undergraduate Handbook 2024-2025

Electrical and Computer Engineering Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) is vital and critical in advancing the information age and defines the forefront of research in: circuits; antenna networks; bio-signal processing; computer architecture;

large-scale integration and computer-aided design; computer networks; control systems; high-speed switching architectures; signal, image and multimedia processing; nanotechnology; optical communications; photonics; and quantum information processing. JOIN ONE OF ECE’S STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS ● The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE) ­ ● Makers — An opportunity to work on electronics-based projects outside of the classroom ● ECE students also participate as electrical leads for the Liquid Propulsion Lab and Rocket Propulsion Lab. Interested in research? ECE has a senior thesis option!

RESEARCH

CAREERS Stephen Fowler , Class of 2018, Electrical Engineering Systems Engineer, Northrop Grumman Corporation

Dr. Krishna Nayak RESEARCH FOCUS: Magnetic Resonance Imaging LAB: Magnetic Resonance Engineering Laboratory RESEARCH PROJECT: Most MRI systems use a very strong magnetic field of 1.5 or 3 Tesla, which is >20,000 times stronger than the earth’s magnetic field.

I am in the Integration and Test group, so a typical day can look like anything from executing tests in the lab and collecting data to performing data analysis to verify functionality and performance. I love the relevancy of my work. Because I am a systems engineer, I get to see the “big picture” with the systems we develop. It’s amazing to see how our products integrate with the larger platform and help support our customers’ missions.

Our newest project is the development of high-performance MRI at lower field strengths around 0.5 Tesla. We expect this to outperform current configurations in parts of the body that move (heart, vocal tract, gastrointestinal, joints, fetus), and in parts of the body that suffer from artifacts (metallic implants, lungs) COURSES: ENGR 102 (Freshman Academy) and EE 301 (Linear Systems) FUN FACT: A summer internship after my first year of graduate school resulted in co-inventing the most widely-used texture compression algorithm in 3D gaming (S3 Texture Compression)

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UNDERGRADUATE HANDBOOK 2024-2025

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