About Engineering at UCSB

A Message From Dean Matthew Tirrell

The College of Engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara is only 42 years old, but has risen rapidly to the first ranks in engineering education and research. In a "sweeping assessment" of the nation's doctoral programs conducted by the eminent National Research Council, 7,876 faculty evaluated 274 universities and their 3,634 doctoral programs. Engineering at UCSB ranked 16th among the top 20 institutions with engineering programs.

The influential journal Science Watch bases its evaluations on how often a faculty's research publications are cited by peers. Science Watch rated the UCSB Materials program first and the College of Engineering 9th nationally, based on its most recent citation impact study covering the period 1993-1997.

The success that these rankings reflect is first and foremost a function of our world-class faculty. Two Engineering faculty are recipients of 2000 Nobel Prizes: Herbert Kroemer, professor of electrical and computer engineering and of materials, won the physics prize; and Alan Heeger, professor of physics and of materials, won the chemistry prize. More than 20 faculty in Engineering have been elected members of the National Academy of Engineering. We rank in the top five among all engineering schools in the proportion of faculty who are also members of the National Academy of Engineering.

Our accomplishments over the past four decades have been considerable. That track record of success infuses our present undertakings with a sense of optimistic excitement about the future. We look forward particularly to intensifying our efforts in the broad areas of nanotechnology and bioengineering. And we are cultivating here at UCSB entrepreneurship in the broadest possible sense of exploring non-traditional approaches to engineering education and research. We are also working at improving our network of relationships outside this university to our alumni, to the high tech community in this part of California, and to the nation's science and technology establishment.

I want to close with a few words on what I think is the distinctive character of engineering at Santa Barbara. Here engineering follows a path closer to basic science than at many other of the nation's engineering schools. And that is one of the key reasons why I chose to accept the deanship at Santa Barbara. I think that technology is not just an inevitable consequence of having a tall stockpile of good basic research that was done with no applications in mind. The Santa Barbara engineering model envisions creative people working on applied problems and coming up against questions that require them to do basic research because they realize that the particular area needs to be developed to pursue the technology. That model is manifested here in people who make it possible to do cutting edge research because they have positioned themselves to be effective agents of this exchange between basic science and technology.