School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Robotics is transforming our lives and work practices and has even greater potential to provide enhanced levels of service, boost efficiency and promote workplace safety. Robotics is even now becoming the driving technology underpinning a whole new generation of autonomous devices and machines that, through their learning capabilities, interact seamlessly with the world around them and provide the missing link between the digital and physical worlds. Progress in robotics research over the last decade has been rapid and requires connection and collaboration across areas. Cornell ECE has recently invested in four new faculty in this area. (Petersen, Napp, Helbling and Lee). ECE’s core strength in this area now includes Dan Lee at Cornell Tech who leads our program there, Kirstin Petersen in Ithaca who works extensively on understanding swarms spanning across autonomy and AI, Nils Napp who explores controls and autonomy in construction and most recently Elizabeth F. Helbling who builds flying micro-robots. The school’s current and growing strength in this area, as well as its collaborative environment and interdisciplinary nature, will allow ECE to leverage a strong, complementary program in MAE to strategically grow this area more broadly into control, automation and construction of micro-robots with the specific goal of 2-3 additional hires in the next decade. Cornell Tech uniquely offers an opportunity to grow robotics under the leadership of Dan Lee, a pioneer in understanding computational principles in biological systems and on applying that knowledge to build autonomous systems. Additional hires in robotics at Cornell Tech would launch Cornell into world leadership in this area.

Quantum computers have the potential to revolutionize computation by making certain types of classically intractable problems solvable. Quantum computers could spur the development of new breakthroughs in scientific research, medicine, machine learning and other complex disciplines by utilizing quantum phenomena of superposition and entanglement. Cornell Engineering has several excellent strengths to build on and extend this effort. Cornell’s research efforts in quantum materials are already among the world’s best. In addition, we have a strong and growing profile of research in quantum devices and optics — including an engineering-led interdisciplinary research group on photonic materials for strong light-matter interactions. Strategically, ECE has a significant role to play in quantum information science, quantum materials and related engineering of devices and sensors for quantum computing and communication. ECE expects to partner fully with AEP on this effort as it exploits existing strengths at Cornell (e.g., in quantum materials and devices) and includes all areas of ECE (materials, devices, 15 communication and computation theory, and detection and sensing). ECE also offers strength on the computing side to develop algorithms, protocols, and communication techniques necessary to exploit these powerful new tools. This highly valuable combination is rare. Few other universities offer programs of this quality and scope. In order to participate here we will need significant growth of at least 3 hires in the next decade.

Increases in computing power and Big Data have led to a new generation of machines that can learn from experience and respond to new inputs. This enables us to achieve higher accuracy, process more data and automate a wide variety of tasks and behaviors. ECE is already playing a unique role in transitioning many of these systems into hardware and utilizing new technologies in computing, sensing and robotics. Additionally, many of the basic tools used in these systems are applied as “black boxes” and are poorly understood. ECE enables a more complete understanding of the fundamentals of artificial intelligence and machine learning, allowing designers to push performance limits. Cornell ECE has a growing strength in this area including several new hires. For example, recent hire Ziv Goldfeld is working towards a comprehensive statistical learning theory to obtain better understanding and strong performance guarantees for modern ML methods that operate on real-world high-dimensional data, and Jayadev Archarya studies tradeoffs between resources for problems in statistical learning. In addition to the theory side of ML, ECE has core strength in computer engineering that enables us to address issues of hardware approaches to ML and AI. Our faculty (ie., Zhiru Zhang, Christina Delimintrou) are national leaders in accelerators and hardware specialization for ML. Strategically, ECE will continue to build core strength in theory and hardware support of AI/ML/Data. Cornell Tech again offers a unique opportunity here, with close collaboration with both industry and adjacent Cornell departments of CS and ORIE. We anticipate 3- 4 hires in this area, possibly split between Cornell Tech and Ithaca.

The ECE plans calls for action in the following three areas: (i) Improving the quality of the undergraduate experience by modernizing the spaces in which undergraduate teaching labs are held. (ii) Allocating more space for instructional labs; Phillips Hall (the school’s home) is simply out of space. Complementary effort to update equipment and increase staff are required to sustain ECE’s leadership among its peers in maintaining strong undergraduate enrollments, which are in part because students are energized by the school’s “maker” attitude, inspired projects and our hands-on approach to learning. (iii) Make renovated undergraduate teaching laboratories visible from the atrium between Duffield and Phillips Halls. This provides an important mechanism for showcasing the school’s focus on hands-on student learning.

The school is already engaged in a bold initiative to restructure its curriculum. These efforts include major revisions of curricula in Data Science and Signal Processing to align better with industry and student interest. Partnering with the McCormick Teaching Excellence Institute (MTEI) in the College of Engineering ECE will continue to lead in curriculum development and educational innovation.

Cornell is known for its strong collaborative culture, and its intellectually diverse, curious, and technically rigorous community. It is a high priority to build new connections to Cornell Tech, between departments within the College of Engineering, and among ECE faculty. Connections to Cornell Tech will be strengthened through a variety of actions — through collaborations on multi-investigator research proposals, joint seminars, joint course offerings, intercampus student education and joint faculty hiring. This will complement efforts to build community within the College to un-silo talent through joint hires 16 and multi-investigator centers. And, to promote collaborations within ECE through seed projects, internal research discussions and cross-unit search committees.

Cornell ECE in collaboration with the College of Engineering has surpassed many of our peers in undergraduate student diversity, and has made strides in the hiring of women faculty, but there is more to do. The school has fallen short in hiring and retention of diverse graduate students and URM faculty. The school will prioritize these areas through focused graduate student and faculty recruiting efforts. Inclusion is as important as recruiting in maintaining a diverse community. It is a strategic priority to retain talent through support of diverse students and faculty at all career stages. ECE has set the following quantitative diversity targets for its faculty for the next 5 years: 30% female faculty and 10% URM faculty. On the longer 10-year time horizon, the corresponding targets are 35% female faculty and 15% URM faculty. These same goals apply to graduate and PhD students, where current levels of diversity mirror the faculty population.