Electrical & Computer Engineering Research

ECE Research Areas

The ECE department is home to a broad array of research activities. Students interested in participating in research should contact faculty who are working in their area of interest.

Computing Architectures, Environmental Sensing and Monitoring (ESM) and Power Engineering are growing research areas in the ECE department.

Why Study Computing Architectures at Portland State University?

The semiconductor industry will add 115,000 U.S. jobs by 2030, yet 58% of technical positions risk going unfilled at current graduation rates. The AI chip market is exploding from $6.6 billion in 2018 to $91 billion by 2025, while neuromorphic computing markets surge from $28.5 million in 2024 to $1.32 billion by 2030. AI-related job postings have skyrocketed 120% year-over-year, with AI hardware engineer roles growing 143% and machine learning engineers commanding average salaries of $166,000. Students entering computing architectures will address the National Academy of Engineering's 14 Grand Challenges spanning sustainability, health, security, and quality of life while capitalizing on unprecedented AI-driven opportunities.

Device scaling, software complexity, and energy consumption indicate that conventional computing cannot continue delivering historical improvement rates. Portland State's program builds on departmental strengths in design validation and verification, computer architecture, design automation, and new and emerging computing paradigms and architectures. With global data centers consuming 176 TWh annually and AI workloads threatening to double electricity demand by 2028, specialized AI accelerators, neuromorphic processors, and energy-efficient architectures are critical industry priorities. The demand for chip designers specializing in AI hardware could exceed supply by 50%, with only 20,000-30,000 currently working across all U.S. industries.

Students develop expertise in verifying complex AI systems, optimizing architectural designs for machine learning workloads, automating chip design processes, and exploring emerging computational paradigms including neuromorphic processing, quantum computing, and brain-inspired architectures. They master hardware-software co-design for AI accelerators, design validation methodologies for specialized processors, and automated tools that optimize power, performance, and area for AI applications. Career paths span AI chip design, verification engineering for machine learning systems, hardware acceleration, neuromorphic engineering, and AI systems architecture across industries from autonomous vehicles to data centers.

Associated Faculty

Why Study Environmental Sensing and Monitoring (ESM) at Portland State University?

Most of the leading institutions working in environmental sensing are focused on the environmental, oceanographic, and atmospheric sciences. However, there is a strong movement within environmental sensing towards deployment of large numbers of sensors (and collecting large amounts of data), lowering the cost of sensors (necessary for deploying large numbers), reducing the size of sensors, consuming lower power and performing autonomous (on-board) signal processing and efficient data transmission. These trends are partly driven by advances in big data analytics but also by the increasing availability of unmanned platforms. Both massive sensor deployments and using aerial and underwater unmanned platforms (drones) provide new ways to sense but also place severe restrictions on size, power and communication data rates. The areas of sensor system development, on-board signal processing, controls, communications, and power are all core to Electrical Engineering. At Portland State, we focus on the Electrical Engineering challenges associated with the future of environmental sensing and monitoring.

Associated Faculty

Why Study Power Engineering at Portland State University?

The Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at Portland State University currently has two areas focused on electric power: Dr. Bass's Power Engineering Group and Dr. Bird's Laboratory for Magnetomechanical Energy Conversion & Control.

Associated Faculty

Power Engineering Group

Overview

The Power Engineering Group's (PEG) research addresses the engineering challenges to the electric power system that arise from large-scale societal issues such as natural disasters, climate change, and cyber-physical security threats. The PEG develops technology and methods to coordinate the dispatch of distributed loads, generators, and energy storage devices to provide utility services that improve power system reliability and facilitate the integration of renewable energy resources.

Research and Funding

PEG research students develop engineering solutions that address challenges imposed on our rapidly-changing electric power system. The large-scale adoption of renewable generation in response to climate change requires the power system be operated in ways distinctly different from the past. And, the adoption of information technology and data science by utilities has provided new opportunities, and presented new challenges, to power systems operators.

PEG research students work in partnership with electric utility engineers to understand these challenges and to develop impactful engineering solutions.

For example, PEG students are investigating the dispatchability of aggregated residential-scale assets in response to utility ancillary service requests. Students conduct performance evaluations on residential assets, including water heaters and battery-inverter systems. They evaluate the dispatchability of these assets in response service request, such as frequency response, frequency regulation, peak demand mitigation, and EIM RTM. PEG students are helping the industry understand how residential assets can be used to provide ancillary services. The PEG is interested in understanding asset characteristics, such as response lags, ramp rates, energy availability, methods execution, etc., of residential-scale assets in response to these ancillary service requests. By dispatching ancillary services through residential load control, a utility can include a higher proportion of renewable resources within its generation portfolio.

The Power Engineering Group has received research funding from Portland General Electric, Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity, and the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Laboratory for Magnetomechanical Energy Conversion and Control

Overview

Dr. Bird’s Laboratory for Magnetomechanical Energy Conversion and Control’s current research focus is on designing magnetically geared electric machines for wind and ocean renewable power generation applications, electrical machines for transportation applications, and computational electromagnetic modelling.

Visit the Laboratory for Magnetomechanical Energy Conversion and Control's website for more information.

Faculty

Dr. Jonathan Bird’s research areas are at the intersection of applied electromagnetics, mechanics and controls. His graduate work involved investigating the performance capabilities of an electrodynamic wheel for high-speed ground transportation applications. While at General Motors, Dr. Bird designed high torque density induction and interior permanent magnet motors for hybrid and fuel-cell vehicle applications. At Portland State University Dr. Bird has been continuing his research into the use of electrodynamic wheels as well as investigating the capabilities of magnetically geared electrical machines for wind and ocean power generation applications. Dr. Bird has authored or coauthored over 40 peer reviewed papers in major journals and conferences. Dr. Bird’s research has been funded by the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, NASA and the North Carolina Coastal Studies Institute.

Students

Graduates of the power engineering program at PSU have gone on to work at many different companies and organizations. Some examples of where our alumni work are Avangrid, Black & Veatch, Bonneville Power Administration, Brown & Kyser, Cooper Bussman, Daimler, DNV GL, Eaton, Elcon, Energy Trust of Oregon, Glumac, HDR, Inspec, Intel, Interface, Jacobs, Leidos, Pacific Northwest National Labs, Pacificorp, PAE, Portland General Electric, POWER Engineers, Powin Energy, Siemens, Stantec, US ACE Hydro Design Center, and Vestas.

Below is a subset of Power Engineering Group MS Thesis and PhD graduates, with graduation date, current employer, dissertation or thesis title, and link to the PSU library:

Hussain Alghamdi, Ph.D. 2025

Vice Dean for Education and Training Affairs, Technical and Vocational Corporation, Saudi Arabia

Detecting and Analyzing Frequency Events in Power Systems Using Tunable Parameters-Based Algorithms: Development, Optimization, and Analysis

Othman Murad, MS 2025

Price-Signal-Based Control Strategy for Heat Pump Water Heaters in Demand Response Applications

Zhongkai Zeng, MS 2024
POWER Engineers
Residential DERs in Service-Oriented Load Participation: Enhancing Grid Flexibility

Daisy Delgado-Zaragoza, MS 2024
GE Aerospace
Single-Stage Three-Phase Buck-Boost DC/AC Converter Design, Analysis, and Validation

Abhijeet Prem, MS 2024
A PWM Control Method for Reducing Electromagnetic Noise at the Generation Source in Power Electronic Converters

Ho Yin Wong, Ph.D. 2023
Hyliion
Design and Analysis of High Performance Magnetic Gears for Magnetomechanical Thrusters

Wiwin Lew, MS 2023
Airity Technologies
Highly Power Dense DC to Three-Phase AC Modular Converters with Tiny Module Capacitors

Jaime Kolln, MS 2023
Pacific Northwest National Labs
Developing an Energy Service Interface Specification

Sean Keene, MS 2022
QualityLogic
Development of a Configurable DERMS Test System in GridAPPS-D

Umar Farooq, MS, 2022
National Transmission and Despatch Company, Pakistan
Development of a Configurable Real-time Event Detection Framework for Power Systems using Swarm Intelligence Optimization