Yale Renames Department to Electrical & Computer Engineering

In an evolving field, a name change reflects new priorities

The Department of Electrical Engineering, part of the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science, has announced it has officially changed its name to the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering.

The new name reflects the evolution of research priorities within the department and responds to broader shifts in a changing industrial landscape. Department Chair Jung Han said the updated name signals a new emphasis, rather than a change in direction.

“While Computer Engineering has existed as a sub-area within Electrical Engineering here at Yale for decades, we believe that the importance of computer and computation technologies warrants a more explicit and elevated recognition of the department as a hub that connects major EE disciplines,” Han said.  

Han cited microelectronics, communications, systems, and energy transmission as areas of focus within electrical engineering that increasingly intersect with computing.

Yale Engineering Dean Jeffrey Brock said that while research within the department has kept pace with developments in industry, the name needed to better reflect that fact.

“If you think about the traditional focus of electrical engineering, it’s the math of, ‘How do you understand electrical signals? How do you design a system?’” Brock said. “But increasingly, problems in electrical engineering involve computing.”

In recent years, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and large language model (LLM) technologies, and other developments have driven a surge in demand for computing power. Data centers and cloud computing represent an ever-increasing percentage of global power consumption, as do AI and LLM applications.

“The power consumption of the average training run for a large language model is kind of an order of magnitude more than most computational efforts, right? It takes this enormous burst of power,” Brock said.

As the demand for smaller, faster chips continues to grow, “we are hitting some physical limits,” Brock said. Thus, the design of computer chips has become a more complex and multifaceted process -- and an engineering challenge. NVIDIA’s design for GPUs is one example: “They are fundamentally different than CPUs, which makes them more suited to certain functions. We’re moving back toward a kind of bespoke design of computer architecture for specific tasks.”

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) or Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMIs), such as the HALO chip recently developed at Yale, are another example. Designed for “chronic” implantation (meaning they are implanted permanently, albeit with regular medical check-ins required), these chips must function at very low power levels to prevent damage to delicate brain tissue.

“As the practical applications of these chips become more specific and more varied, the department is turning toward emphasizing that as a key,” Brock said.

“Computer engineering represents EE's ubiquitous presence in the modern information society, shaping and enhancing the way we live, work, and interact with the world around us,” Han said.