Crosscutting Research Themes
While our traditional research areas focus on a primary topic, Illinois ECE has identified several areas of opportunity that require collaboration across disciplines. These crosscutting themes draw experts from multiple areas, and across campus, to help solve the most pressing technological challenges of the day.
Data/Information Science and Systems
Information is a pervasive strand that runs through the fabric of our modern society; it is ubiquitous in every facet of our lives, from communication and multimedia systems to health, economics, commerce, policy, and scientific exploration and discovery. Research under this broadly-defined theme spans all aspects of scientific and technological innovations aimed at advancing information utilization.
Electronics, Plasmonics, and Photonics
Advances in our understanding of the interactions of matter and light and related innovations occurring in the areas of electronics, plasmonics, and photonics have been essential enablers of the information revolution that has been transforming our lives. Electronics have paved the way to the expansion of computing power and subsequent expansions in computational bandwidth and data transport rates, and storage capacities are being fueled by higher frequency plasmonic and photonic devices and channels.
Artificial Intelligence
Recent AI breakthroughs such as LLMs, diffusion models, deep neural networks, and others, rely on theory to understand model training and inference, algorithms that translate the theory to software, and novel computer architectures to design energy-efficient and high-performance computing platforms to execute the software. ECE’s unique systems-oriented viewpoint of AI, comprising theory, architecture, algorithms, and software, allows its faculty and students to engineer scalable AI systems by optimizing the trade-offs between accuracy, robustness, energy consumption, and security, that exist across the compute stack from systems to semiconductor devices, and in the process, dramatically transform fields such as audio/video processing, decision making in robotics and control, neuroscience, and bioinformatics. Our ECE curriculum trains the next generation of engineers to apply foundational principles across theory, algorithms, and systems, regardless of the current and future evolution of AI.
Bioelectronics and Bioinformatics
Advances in electromagnetics, microelectronics, nanotechnology, image/signal processing, sensors, computer architecture, and control systems are fueling the genomics revolution, point-of-care medical treatment, personalized medicine, fundamental understanding of the human brain, and advanced medical technologies for creating images of physiology that extend from entire organs down to single molecules within cells.
Energy
Energy is a fundamental theme for investigating the sustainability of human existence and the introduction of new technologies to improve the quality of life on earth. A clear understanding of the issues of energy conversion, storage, delivery, and utilization is critical for innovative contributions to this theme.