Program Overview

About the Program

The Computer Engineering Program is offered jointly by the Computer Science Department and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in the College of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

  • The program is a multi-disciplinary program of study that promotes the integration of computer hardware and software through computer science and electrical engineering curricula.
  • The curriculum provides a broad education in the fundamentals of computer engineering as well as a solid foundation in the basic sciences including mathematics, electrical theory, computer hardware, and computer software.
  • Students specialize their studies in areas such as computer-aided design for hardware, computer systems, multimedia computing, computer networks, computer operation systems and computer languages, real-time computing, or very large-scale circuit design.
  • The program prepares students for a wide range of positions in business, government and private industrial research, development and manufacturing organizations.

Degree Program

The Computer Engineering major’s objective is to educate broadly based engineers with an understanding of digital electronics, computer architecture, system software and integrated circuit design. These topics bridge traditional electrical engineering and computer science curricula. The Computer Engineering degree program is conducted jointly with faculty from the Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering Departments.

Computer engineers emerging from this program will be able to design and build integrated digital hardware and software systems in a wide range of applications areas. Computer engineers will seldom work alone and thus teamwork and project management skills are also emphasized.

Our Commitment to Students

  • Seven students to each faculty member in the Pre-CE major
  • Three students to each faculty member in the CE major
  • One-on-one advising by CE faculty to ensure positive educational guidance and direction
  • Curriculum advising available Mon. through Fri. from 8a to 5p (closed lunch 12-1p)
  • Well-rounded curriculum with hands-on group project experience
  • Career advising before the student is ready to graduate
Why Choose CE? brochure image

Course Spotlight - Multimedia Systems

candle illustration by John Batikian

Instructor: Michael Melliar-Smith
Quarter: Spring 2012

ECE160 Multimedia Systems is an intro course on multimedia, audio and video.

The course addresses: multimedia authoring tools; representation of color; Standards for audio and video (including MP3, MIDI, GIF, HTML5, JPEG, MPEG, HDTV and the digital cinema standard); compression aglorithms (including discrete cosine transformation, wavelet transformation, and motion compensation); watermarking; IP streaming; Image recognition and retrieval.

The course includes four major projects in each of which each student selects and downloads a commercially available tool, and uses the tool to demonstrate 1) video editing; 2) music synthesis; 3) image rendering; 4) image animation.

An example of project from ECE160: "Domino" by M. Magnusson

Curriculum Highlights

Freshman to Senior Year Timeline

student working in lab

Students in the CE Program must fulfill University, College of Engineering, and Computer Engineering Program degree requirements. Milestones for the curriculum and the student experience are documented in the CE Program's Academic Timeline.

Sequence Topics

drawing of hardware and software

During the junior year a student must select two of the following sequence topics that have two to three classes in each. These courses help satisfy CE Major Degree Requirements in the Sr. Elective Study Plan.

CAD for integrated circuits; computer networks; distributed systems; multimedia; network computing; programming languages; real-time computing and control; very large scale integration (VLSI)

Senior "Capstone" Course (ECE or CMPSC 189A/B)

students at Capstone poster session

During the senior year, all Computer Engineering students are required to take the two quarter Senior Computer Systems Project course. Students, working in small teams, design and engineer innovative hardware and software systems using techniques from various disciplines to create a final project.