A message from the director
In 2025, the Penn State School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) celebrated its 10th anniversary. Over the past ten years we have achieved many of our initial goals such as improving the academic breadth and programs for undergraduate students, growing and serving the University as the focal point for research on and learning of computation to further interdisciplinary research, and improving our ability to attract large projects and fundraising. We have also grown both in size and scope of our educational and research programs. Both the department of electrical engineering and department of computer science and engineering are thriving.
Since forming the school, our undergraduate and graduate programs have been ranked consistently in the top 10% of programs nationally. Both departments are in the top ten in funding from the National Science Foundation. Over the past several years, one-third of the graduates from the College of Engineering have been from EECS, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The number of undergraduate students in the school has almost doubled since the school was formed, and the number of graduate students has grown by more than one-third.
We have also greatly expanded our academic offerings. In addition to our electrical engineering, computer science, computer engineering, and data science undergraduate degrees, we launched a new school-wide bachelor of science in artificial intelligence engineering. This degree is unique in the country because of its comprehensive inclusion of computer science, computer engineering, and electrical engineering topics. We have also introduced minors in cyber security, computer engineering, computational science, and quantum information and science. Many of our faculty are part of the interdisciplinary research institutes at Penn State including the Materials Research Institute, Huck Institute of Life Sciences, and the Institute of Computational and Data Sciences, which is indicative or the highly interdisciplinary nature of our research and the broad fields that our degrees can impact. Our faculty lead important research centers and institutes at the University including the Institute of Networking and Security Research, the Center on Directed Energy, and the Center for Artificial Intelligence Foundations and Engineered Systems.
We are proud of our commitment to equity and inclusion at all levels, starting in K-12. We’ve founded CSE and EE summer camps—geared toward girls in middle and high school but open to all students. We also lead the Girls Who Code club for high school students.
I’d like to thank all who have been or are part of our EECS community for making all the accomplishments of the past decade possible. We look forward to building on these successes and are excited to see what the future holds for the School of EECS.
Sincerely,
Tom La Porta
Director of the Penn State School of EECS
Evan Pugh Professor
