Profile

Wei Wang, 2001 Ph.D. Graduate, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Wei Wang came to PSU's Maseeh College from Beijing, China, where she received her master's degree in microcomputer and signal processing. "The Maseeh College has great curriculum designed for students in electrical and computer engineering," says Wei, "and the lab and research facilities are wonderful."

In a program where the male to female ratio is typically about eight to one, Wei found guidance from Dr. Malgorzata Chrzanowska-Jeske, chair and professor of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. "I thank Dr. Jeske for her academic guidance," says Wei. "As a woman professor, she also set a role model for me in many aspects of life."

Wei appreciates how PSU's location allows for good industry connections. One summer she worked as an intern at Mentor Graphics Corporation. She worked at Synopsys, Inc., designing Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools for 6 years. Currently, she works at the Microarchitecture Research Lab at Intel Corporation, conducting research on the reliability issues for the next generation multi-core design.

Wei Wang's dissertation research, under the guidance of Dr. Malgorzata Chrzanowska-Jeske, focused on new data structures for the synthesis of Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuits. The structure on which she worked is a regular multi-level representation of Boolean function of which the key characteristics include a linear growth in size per level and localized connections. This data structure is suitable for use in deep sub-micron ASIC designs as well as for use in architecting fine-grain Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs).

Asked what advice she has for women who wish to pursue graduate degrees in the field of electrical and computer engineering, Wei says, "Many opportunities are open to young women today. Women do as well as men in research, but it's essential to focus on mathematics and science courses early on."