Mission/Vision Statement

The ECE Project Track MS program prepares students to be leaders in innovation-driven companies. By engaging in collaborative team projects based on emerging technology challenges or key societal needs, students will deepen both the breadth and depth of their technical expertise while building essential skills in problem definition, project management, teamwork, and technical communication.

The Project Track allows students to participate in a two-semester team project comparable to scope to a MS-thesis, but focused on design rather than basic research. Through the Concepts to Innovation (C2I), course sequence and additional coursework on intellectual property, ideation and project management, students can work on a real-world design project as well as develop professional skills of great value to innovation-driven companies. Within the C2I course sequence, teams follow a Context/Challenge/Approach/Results (CCAR) process to i) define the focuses and requirements for their project, based on understanding the context (customer need and/or competitive landscape) and challenge (developing qualitative and quantitative requirements from customer requirements and gap analysis), ii) define an approach which can meet the requirements and iii) implement their design and evaluate/benchmark against their requirements and existing approaches (results).

Program Outcomes

After completion of the ECE Project Track MS, students: 

  • Should have gained an end-to-end idea/concept to prototype development experience. 
  • Should have a basic understanding of the engineering design process, within the Context/Challenge/Approach/Results (CCAR) context including problem definition, specification (functionality/metric) definition, prototyping, validation and benchmarking. 
  • Should have proficiency in applying graduate-level ECE concepts (in HW and/or SW realms) to practical design problems. 
  • Should have acquired basic project management skills, including task delegation, timeline development, resource allocation, and risk management.
  • Should have become proficient in effective technical communication—oral, written, and visual—including documentation and presentations.
  • Should be familiar with collaborative teamwork and peer-to-peer learning.
  • Should be able to exchange constructive feedback and resolve conflict within teams.