Year Marks Record Number of ECE Ph.D. Graduates

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering within the A. James Clark School of Engineering graduated 64 Ph.D. students in the year between July 2006 and June 2007, a record figure for the department. The number was well in excess of the average of the previous five years.

"We are on track to continue exceeding the long-term average this year as we have graduated approximately 40 students between July and December 2007," said ECE Chair Patrick O'Shea.

The ECE Department is the largest within the A. James Clark School of Engineering, and graduates the most Ph.D. students of any department at the University of Maryland.

An exit survey conducted by the department's Graduate Studies Office indicates that ECE Ph.D. graduates go on to a wide range of careers. Approximately 55% of recent graduates went on to work in industry, at companies that include Agilent, Cisco Systems, Honeywell, Hughes Network Systems, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Qualcomm, Synopsis, and Texas Instruments. Approximately 35% of graduates pursued careers in academia, either as assistant professors or postdocs at such universities as American University, Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Stanford, and the University of Cairo. The remaining 10% went on to pursue positions in government labs and/or agencies.

Published February 1, 2008