Letters to
prospective graduate student researchers:
Graduate Applicants to the Electrical and
Computer Engineering Department:
If you are not attending
classes in the University of Florida,
Electrical and Computer Engineering, (ECE) Department then,
entrance in our department of ECE is highly competitive. As a
faculty at the University of Florida, I am are overwhelmed by the
quality and numbers of excellent students that have been accepted to
the ECE department this year and every year. As for my paid
research assistants, I pick the best students out of our classes, so
you need to be in the UF ECE graduate electronics classes to even be
considered for funding. See my letter to students attending classes for
an explanation.
My focus research areas are
microwave/RF IC design and test, high speed
I/O design and test, analog and mixed-signal IC VLSI design and
test. I have no research or plans for research in strictly
digital VLSI design. If you have a strictly digital background, you
need some retraining to be able to contribute to my research areas.
Until you are on-campus please direct
all you questions to Dr. Hammer,
Professor and Graduate Coordinator, or the graduate secretary
named Shannon.
hammer@graduate.ece.ufl.edu
office@graduate.ece.ufl.edu
I will direct all my attention for
future student recruiting to the
certified files and records and recommendations that you send to
Prof. Hammer's office, not to direct email to me. I cannot
determine who is the most worthy by email discussions but I can by the
application materials that you officially send us.
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ECE Department
Graduate Students Interested in Research Assistant Funding, (RA):
The fact that you are here asking
about an RA job tells me that you
passed the difficult department entrance process and made it into the
ECE department at the University of Florida. Our student backgrounds,
experience and quality has improved greatly in our graduate classes and
our M.S. and Ph.D. students are recruited by most of the largest US IC
and electronics companies.
As part of our admission you had to
demonstrate the ability to pay for
your degree. However, I realize that you and frankly, all the graduate
students in the department greatly benefit from a RA or TA to
support their graduate work.
I greatly enjoy working with students
like you. But at this time, I am
collecting resumes and not hiring research assistants who are new
students.
1. I like to pick the best students
who I work with from my classes and
from other professors classes in the electronics area. I need to know
that my RAs can learn quickly and effectively in a competitive class.
2. Most if not all new students are
deficient in their background and
skills to perform research. That is why students enroll in a graduate
program. The deficiencies are best fixed by a semester or two of
graduate classes.
3. Research funding is a contract for
excellent and productive
engineering work. I seek the best trained and most accomplished
students with design experience in our graduate courses for funded
positions. Good research productivity and creative mastery of circuit
design tools are required in order to satisfy funding agencies
and research progress must be demonstrated every three to six months.
Training time is not included in the contract work schedules.
4. There is a group of unhired
graduate students with one or more years
class experience that are already in our department. Many of these
students are excellent and have great knowledge of our circuit design
tools. They will probably be hired first before new students in
the department.
In general, I need to see the
following skills before I can hire a
student who can do IC design and test research. Otherwise, poor design
or test work gets done, I lose contract money and the RA is laid
off (no longer paid).
1. Ability to design and circuit
simulate in the Cadence software,
also, schematic capture, DRC, extraction and LVS.
2. Analog design background or
microwave design background at the
graduate level.
3. Graduate VLSI design background
4. Ability to listen, talk and write
effectively.
5. Ability to meet deadlines and
solve problems in doing project work.
6. Ability to work hard for a goal.
Research work is demanding.
Sincerely,
Prof. Eisenstadt
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