UCLA Electrical Engineering

We are thrilled to announce that 6 UCLA Samueli PhD students have won the highly selective 2026 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship!

Among the fellowship recipients are our ECE students Sujoy Ghosh (advised by Professor Subu Iyer), Daniel McGovern (advised by Benjamin Williams), George Karfakis (advised by Professor Puneet Gupta), and Samyak Chakrabarty (advised by Professor Sudhakar Pamarti).

Congratulations to all our outstanding researchers!

Prof. Subramanian Iyer was recently featured in IEEE Spectrum article titled, "Are U.S. Engineering Ph.D. Programs Losing Students?" According to Iyer, departments across UC Los Angeles, including engineering, plan to scale back Ph.D. admissions this year. “The fear is that at some point, all this government money will be taken away,” Iyer says. “Lowering the admissions rate is just a way to prepare for that reality.”

Please see the full article:

U.S. Universities Brace for Shrinking Engineering Ph.D. Cohorts Some electrical engineering Ph.D. programs are seeing declining enrollment amid funding cuts and visa uncertainty.

Professor Subramanian S. Iyer, Director of the UCLA CHIPS program, served as a panelist at the ISIG Executive Summit USA 2026 held April 20–21 in Santa Clara. He joined academic and industry leaders in a high-impact panel discussion on the evolving U.S. semiconductor landscape, focusing on the growing need to develop the next generation of engineering talent. The session highlighted critical challenges in higher education, workforce readiness, and the alignment of public and private investments to sustain innovation in advanced semiconductor technologies.