Dear Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni, and Advisors of the ECE Department,

I wish you all a Happy New Year as we start our journey of 2024! As the newly appointed Chair, I am humbled by your support and mindful of the aspirations we collectively carry. I hope that I become the essential piece of the department that can empower our faculty and staff members to make our department nationally recognized.

Reflecting on the achievements of 2023, I extend my sincere gratitude to Florian Solzbacher for his leadership, guiding our ECE Department through challenges such as pandemic, flooding, and enrollment fluctuations. His genuine commitment to our department will be remembered fondly.

I wish to celebrate the exceptional efforts of our ECE faculty and staff. In 2023, we proudly secured the #1 position in the College of Engineering, in categories of the total number of proposals submitted (137) and the average number of proposals submitted per PI (4.3). Our total sponsored research awards exceeded $9.0M. We have been training more than 700 students (465 undergraduate and 248 graduate students) with an additional 110 students in the Utah Asia Campus. These are a testament to our collective dedication to excellence!

I am also thrilled about the opportunities this year presents us to achieve positive outcomes collaboratively. We plan to strengthen our capability in Computer Engineering through new faculty hiring, assist our faculty’s aspiration for research by hiring grant specialists, initiate new efforts of student recruiting beyond Utah, revamp our curriculum to better prepare our students, and increase our intimacy with alumni. I hope that we can make big strides together in 2024.

Looking ahead to 2024, I encourage all of us to continue fostering innovation and collaboration for our shared success. Let us focus on enhancing the “qualities” in both research and teaching, aiming to elevate the educational experience for undergraduate and graduate students. As we step into this new year, let’s collectively aspire to create impactful works that inspire and resonate with our societies and the world around us.

I extend my warmest wishes to you and your families for an exciting New Year!

Best regards,

Hanseup Kim

Department Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

University of Utah