2022-2023 Electrical and Computer Engineering Facilities and Programs

Computing Resources

The department maintains a server room with several racks of computer and storage servers in addition to computing resources within individual faculty labs. The network infrastructure supports a variety of Windows, UNIX, and Linux servers, workstations, and laptops. The school also offers access to a computing cluster primarily used for undergraduate and graduate teaching purposes. The campus supplies free access to a large-scale computing cluster (Hoffman2) with over 13,000 computing cores on over 1200 server nodes. Archival-class backup storage is also available through the campus.

Research Centers and Laboratories

Center for Development of Emerging Storage Systems (CoDESS)

CoDESS has a dual mission: to push the frontiers of modern data storage systems through an integrated research program and to create a highly-trained workforce of graduate students. Current research thrusts include information and coding theory for ultra-reliable data storage systems, data reduction algorithms and communication methods for cloud storage, enabling technologies for future recording paradigms and storage devices, and resource-efficient signal processing techniques and architecture optimization.

Center for Engineering Economics, Learning, and Networks (CEELN)

The Center for Engineering Economics, Learning, and Networks will develop a new wave of ideas, technologies, networks, and systems that change the ways in which people (and devices) interact, communicate, collaborate, learn, teach, and discover. The center brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers from diverse disciplines—including computer science, electrical engineering, economics, and mathematics—with diverse interests spanning microeconomics, machine learning, multiagent systems, artificial intelligence, optimization, and physical and social networks, all sharing a common passion: developing rigorous theoretical foundations to shape the design of future generations of networks and systems for interaction.

Center for Heterogeneous Integration and Performance Scaling (CHIPS)

The Center for Heterogeneous Integration and Performance Scaling addresses emerging technologies, design, and architectures to achieve a more holistic Moore’s Law for the overall system. It has pioneered the chiplet/dielet approach to heterogeneous integration on both rigid and flexible platforms, and the logic-based charge trap transistor for in-memory analog computation. Core activities include advanced heterogeneous hardware integration technologies, methodologies, and tools; wafer-scale integration; active and passive components for advanced systems; medical electronics; and in-memory analog computing. CHIPS applies these methods to the development of large-scale reliable systems.

CHIPS is multidisciplinary, integrating specialties and students in diverse areas that include electrical and computer engineering, computer science, materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science and engineering, biosciences, and medicine; with strong industry participation. CHIPS is unabashedly hardware focused, and develops students who want to build and test what they design, much of it in-house.

Center for High-Frequency Electronics

The Center for High-Frequency Electronics was established with support from several government agencies and contributions from local industries, beginning with a $10 million grant from Hewlett-Packard.

The first major goal of the center is to combine, in a synergistic manner, five areas of research. These include solid-state millimeter wave devices, millimeter systems for imaging and communications, millimeter wave high-power sources (gyrotrons), GaAs gigabit logic systems, and VLSI and LSI based on new materials and structures. The center supports work in these areas by supplying the necessary advanced equipment and facilities and allows the University to play a major role in initiating and generating investigations into new electronic devices. Students, both graduate and under-graduate, receive training and instruction in a unique facility.

The second major goal of the center is to bring together the manpower and skills necessary to synthesize new areas of activity by stimulating interactions between different interdependent fields. The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, other departments within UCLA, and local universities (such as Caltech and USC) have begun to combine and correlate certain research programs as a result of the formation of the center.

Clean Energy Research Center–Los Angeles (CERC–LA)

Lei He, Director

CERC–LA was created by UCLA to tackle many of the grand challenges related to generation, transmission, storage, and management of energy. As many energy challenges are global in nature, this center engages the participation of a multidisciplinary group of researchers from many nations. CERC–LA leads a U.S.-China clean energy and climate change research consortium. CERC–LA, together with the China National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation (NCSC), Peking University (PKU), and Fudan University, was selected by the U.S. Department of State and the China National Development and Reform Commission as a U.S.-China EcoPartner. CERC–LA plans to have satellite offices in other cities including Shanghai and Beijing.

Circuits Laboratories

The laboratories are equipped for measurements on high-speed analog and digital circuits and are used for the experimental study of communication, signal processing, and instrumentation systems. A hybrid integrated circuit facility is available for rapid mounting, testing, and revision of miniature circuits. These include both discrete components and integrated circuit chips. The laboratory is available to advanced undergraduate and graduate students through faculty sponsorship on thesis topics, research grants, or special studies.

Electromagnetics Laboratories

The laboratories involve the disciplines of microwaves, millimeter waves, wireless electronics, and electromechanics. Students enrolled in microwave laboratory courses, such as Electrical and Computer Engineering 163DA and 164DB, special projects classes such as Electrical and Computer Engineering 199, and/or research projects, have the opportunity to obtain experimental and design experience in the following technology areas: integrated microwave circuits and antennas, integrated millimeter wave circuits and antennas, numerical visualization of electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic scattering and radar cross-section measurements, and antenna near field and diagnostics measurements.

Koç UCLA Translational Research Center

Aydogan Ozcan, Director

The center is a world-leading research nexus for new imaging, sensing, and diagnostics technologies to use in creating a massively scalable suite of ubiquitous computational laboratories, which will significantly improve the tool set for probing micro- and nano-scale objects and processes. Its focus on simplified and cost-effective designs for these analysis tools ensures they are especially suitable for point-of-care and home use, and for professional needs in resource-constrained settings. Through these next-generation technologies, the laboratory will create integrated self-learning systems and networks, specifically for sensing and diagnosis, that aim to impact measurement challenges in application focus areas—such as point-of-care medicine, mobile health, telemedicine, and environmental monitoring—with highly sensitive, specific, and yet remarkably cost-effective and massively scalable technological solutions.

Nanoelectronics Research Facility (Nanolab)

Nanolab is a state-of-the-art, 20,000-square-foot, class 10/10011000 clean-room facility that supports graduate research and teaching. The space includes the Microlab, an undergraduate teaching laboratory for device fabrication (CMOS, MEMS, and optoelectronics). With a full complement of utilities (high-purity deionized water, high-purity nitrogen, exhaust scrubbers) and the latest technologies in vibration isolation and electromagnetic shielding, Nanolab offers advanced processing equipment for fabrication and analysis. In BSL2-capable biosuites, researchers can leverage standard semiconductor process techniques with evolving biomedical, nanometer-scale fabrication to study fundamental quantum size effects; and explore novel nanometer-scale device concepts. Nanolab staff has deep knowledge of fabrication techniques and process development to support both academic and commercial research and development projects.

Photonics and Optoelectronics Laboratories

Students in the Laser Laboratory investigate the properties of lasers; and gain an understanding of the application of this modern technol ogy to optics, communication, and holography.

The photonics and optoelectronics laboratories include facilities for research in all of the basic areas of quantum electronics. Specific areas of experimental investigation include high-powered lasers, nonlinear optical processes, ultrafast lasers, parametric frequency conversion, electro-optics, infrared detection, and semiconductor lasers and detectors. Operating lasers include mode-locked and Q-switched Nd:YAG and Nd:YLF lasers, Ti:Al2O3 lasers, ultraviolet and visible wavelength argon lasers, wavelength-tunable dye lasers, as well as gallium arsenide, helium-neon, excimer, and high-powered continuous and pulsed carbon dioxide laser systems. Also available are equipment and facilities for research on semiconductor lasers, fiber optics, nonlinear optics, and ultrashort laser pulses. These laboratories are open to undergraduate and graduate students who have faculty sponsorship for their thesis projects or special studies.

Plasma Electronics Facilities

Two laboratories are dedicated to the study of the effects of intense laser radiation on matter in the plasma state. One houses a state-of-the-art, tabletop terawatt (T3) 400fs laser system that can be operated in either a single or dual frequency mode for laser-plasma interaction studies. Diagnostic equipment includes a ruby laser scattering system, a streak camera, and optical spectrograph and multichannel analyzer. Parametric instabilities such as stimulated Raman scattering have been studied, as well as the resonant excitation of plasma waves by optical mixing. The second laboratory, located in Boelter Hall, houses the MARS laser, currently the largest on-campus university CO2 laser in the U.S. It can produce 200J, 170ps pulses of CO2 radiation, focusable to 1016 W/cm2. The laser is used for testing new ideas for laser-driven particle accelerators and free-electron lasers. Several high-pressure, short-pulse drivers can be used on the MARS. Other equipment includes a theta-pinch plasma generator, an electron linac injector, and electron detectors and analyzers.

A second group of laboratories is dedicated to basic research in plasma sources for basic experiments, plasma processing, and plasma heating.

There is also a large computing cluster called DAWSON 2 that is dedicated to the study of plasma-based acceleration, inertial fusion energy, and high-energy-density plasma science. DAWSON 2 consists of 96 HP L390 nodes, each with 12 Intel X5650 CPUs and 48 GB of RAM; and three Nvidia M2070s GPUs and 18 GB of global memory (for a total of 1152 CPUs and 288 GPUs) connected by a nonblocking QDR Infiniband network with 160TB of parallel storage from Panasas. Peak system performance is approximately 300TF/150TF (single/double precision) with a measured linpack performance of 68.1TF (double precision). DAWSON 2 is housed in the UCLA Institute for Digital Research Engineering data center.

Solid-State Electronics Facilities

Solid-state electronics equipment and facilities include a modern integrated semiconductor device processing laboratory; complete new Si and III-V compound molecular beam epitaxy systems; CAD and mask-making facilities; lasers for beam crystallization study; thin film and characterization equipment; deep-level transient spectroscopy instruments; computerized capacitance-voltage and other characterization equipment, including doping density profiling systems; low-temperature facilities for material and device physics studies in cryogenic temperatures; optical equipment, including many different types of lasers for optical characterization of superlattice and quantum well devices; and characterization equipment for high-speed devices, including high magnetic field facilities for magnetotransport measurement of heterostructures. The laboratory facilities are available to faculty, staff, and graduate students for their research.

Multidisciplinary Research Facilities

The department is also associated with several multidisciplinary research centers including

Faculty Groups and Laboratories

Department faculty members also lead a broad range of research groups and laboratories that cover a wide spectrum of specialties, including