Exploring Engineering Ep. 05: Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Robert Nochez
I would definitely say that the major is very broad, and it’s done so in a good way, because you can specialize in a lot of things based on what you’re interested in.

Evan Sandoval
I think it’s very important to have exposure to people that have done what you want to do, and just sort of that transfer of information, that communication between a student and somebody who has walked the walk is very valuable.

Laura Vogt
You just heard from Robert Nochez and Evan Sandoval, two electrical engineering and computer sciences undergraduates. You’ll hear more from both of them later in this episode.

Hi, I’m Laura Vogt, director of student communications for UC Berkeley Engineering’s marketing and communications team. I’m also the host and producer of this podcast, Exploring Engineering at UC Berkeley.

Today’s episode of Exploring Engineering takes a look at UC Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, usually referred to as EECS, or E-E-C-S. Over the last couple of years, it’s now shared with the College of Computing, Data Science and Society, or C-D-S-S.

Our program is one of the more unique ones, in that there are only a couple other universities in the US that have both electrical engineering and computer sciences in one department.

And I’m excited we get to explore what that means during this episode, beginning with our faculty member, Claire Tomlin, being interviewed by Sarah Yang, assistant dean for marketing and communications in the College of Engineering.
When we interviewed Claire, she was the current department chair of EECS, and she has since stepped down from that position. However, we would be remiss to not share with you her thoughts on Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Sarah Yang
I am so excited to have Claire Tomlin here today, because I’ve wanted to, yes, I wanted to talk with you so much. Because not only is she the chair of electrical engineering and computer sciences, she’s a MacArthur Genius. She’s won the grant for your work in aviation engineering. And your background is actually really interesting. And I would love to start the conversation with a bit about how you got into engineering.

Claire Tomlin
I don’t think I knew from being a child what I wanted to do. When I was young, I actually remember in high school, kind of worried about it, wondering how I would ever… I was good at school. I liked school, but how do you make money from, how do you make a living from being good at school? That was just a question I had. I remember thinking that in grade 10 and wondering, what could I do? I was good at math.

When I was in grade 11, there was an opportunity to do a summer program about engineering or STEM and I grew up in Canada. It was a program called Shad Valley. There were five Canadian universities participating. I applied, I got a fellowship to participate in this, and I spent a month at the University of New Brunswick, out on the east coast of Canada. I learned, you know, it’s kind of a fun topic in math and engineering. Not that I was really interested in engineering. But then I spent the rest of the summer working for the company that sponsored me, and that was an electronics company. They made modems. They don’t exist anymore. They made modems.

Sarah Yang
I remember modems? Yeah? I remember dialing up, yeah, to get to the internet.

Claire Tomlin
In Ottawa, where my family lived, and I met a whole bunch of interns, summer interns there from the University of Waterloo, which is a co-op program. You study engineering for five years, no break. School work. School work, every four months. But it just seemed to me like a really practical way to pay for college, because your work terms basically brought in some money that you could pay for your next semester’s tuition, and also, you know, get a pretty good paying job once you’re done.

And I met a lot of electrical engineers who, you know, the salaries were good. So that was, I think, the pathway that said, you know, if you’re good at math, this is something that, you know, electrical engineering is a really good career. And I thought, okay, I can do this. And I applied, and got in, and I became an electrical engineer.

Sarah Yang
We could talk a little bit about people who might not always know about things like, what, what does it mean to be an electrical engineer? What does it mean to be a computer scientist, you know? And, and I love the fact that we call our department EECS, because it’s electrical engineering and computer science. If that’s our affectionate term for it, I don’t know if it’s widespread among other engineering schools.

Claire Tomlin
It’s not widespread. In fact, there are only a few EECS programs across the country. It’s true that most of the programs across the country have separate EE and CS departments.

There are so many areas that are at the interface of EE and CS. I work in control theory, which is the study of basically how you automate systems, how you build representations, mathematical representations of systems, and then how you design automation schemes for that. Like I’ve worked a lot in aviation and autopilot…

Sarah Yang
You keep things from running into each other is pretty your specialty, right?

Claire Tomlin
Yeah, but robotics is all about automation. I mean, that’s basically what automation is. You’re designing schemes to make mechanical systems function on their own or function nicely with people, and that area has so much from both sides of EE and CS, even and especially now as AI becomes more and more prevalent in such systems.

But not just AI and robotics and control—like computer architecture is an area where we have a very strong computer architecture group in EECS at Berkeley, and it’s kind of evenly split across EE and CS.

You know, you have people that are designing the chips and really thinking about chip design, but also people that are working on the software, they like the actual implementation of different programs in those computer chips.

And being in one department allows, of course, people can collaborate across departments, but I think having one department where we have a single student body, you can have students that are, you know, coming more from the software architecture side, students that are interested more in hardware architecture, and they’re in the same groups.

And so that has been a strength of our program. You can do anything you want. You can go a lot of our students graduate with our undergraduate degree, and then they go into industry. And there’s, you know, the big companies like Google and Facebook and Microsoft.

Sarah Yang
There’s a lot of recruitment here on campus.

Claire Tomlin
Yeah, a lot of big companies, a lot of recruitment, startups. A big number, a large number of our students, they’ve met people here. They’re forming, and they have an idea they want to work on. So they have a startup idea. So I’ve seen a lot of students who are doing that, but also students who connect with startup companies that exist already.

So not just the big companies, but smaller companies doing, you know, startup ideas in big things right now are robotic startup companies, because of the way AI is affecting robotics.

There’s students doing really cool things that are outside of the sort of typical EECS. Oh, and let me not before I go away from big companies, not just sort of the software side, but the hardware side.

So Apple is a big company. They do a lot of software, but they also are very interested in chip design and doing a lot of chip design. They would like to hire hardware engineers, because they see that as an area. They sort of want that vertical going all the way from chip design to the software they develop.

Sarah Yang
We didn’t even talk about the Chips and Science Act.

Claire Tomlin
No, and we should have had it. It’s had a big effect, especially in the last few years, on more students, because in EECS, it’s very, it’s a very broad undergraduate degree.

And in the past, especially maybe, you know, starting about more than a decade ago, more students had been choosing to go into the CS track, so they would come into EECS, but then they would take, like a lot of students taking the CS classes.
The need for more hardware designers, chip designers has been directly translated, and that’s by the, you know, a lot of the efforts of our faculty in EE by, you know, connecting with companies, having actual, you know, companies come and support our classes.

That’s not a very usual thing, but the like, for example, companies that will fund an extra TA to open up a new section in our class to increase the size, because we have limits on our classes based on the funding that comes for teaching those classes.
So that’s not only the kind of opportunities that they see working for these companies when they graduate, but also just the communication at, you know, the freshman level, freshman, sophomore level, to these students. This is what chip designers do.
This is the kind of, this is an exciting career, like something that may not a lot of students do computer science in high school, but not many students do kind of chip design in high school. I don’t know if any students do chip design in high school.

Sarah Yang
Students make sure they study or be involved with if they are interested in pursuing this, like, I don’t know, just to make sure it’s like, is this right for me? What? What are some of the things that they can do before they dive in?

Claire Tomlin
They should take their math classes in high school seriously. I think students, you know, again, it comes back to the fundamentals. Math, physics, you know, regardless of whether it’s EE and CS, there’s, you know, some high school students have more opportunities to get involved in, you know, engineering, computer science, as students, but that’s, you know, that’s not universal, and it’s kind of hard sometimes.

But, you know, taking, taking the math classes, taking the, you know, your science classes, but also, you know, in general, like being able to write well, being able to explain yourself, that you know, the English history, having a perspective…

Sarah Yang
Those are soft skills I don’t often hear attached to engineering.

Claire Tomlin
You know, it’s incredibly important in, you know, we see it come through in the way students explain what they’re working on.
When they’re presenting their work, they’re working in groups, being able to, you know, work well in a group, not take over.
Some students feel like, oh, working well in a group means I’ll do everything. And, you know, that’s not the case. You’ve got to make sure you distribute the work across the different people in the group.

A lot of those skills are learned in high school, or, you know, even earlier as you are working together with people.
Make sure that you know those kinds of things, know, knowing how to interact when you have that kind of formal group structure has been something that is really, I mean, it’s important in any field, but we have a lot of group projects in our undergraduate courses, and it can be a source of strength, but it can also be a source of stress for a lot of students.
And so, you know, those are kinds of things that you know you don’t necessarily learn directly, you learn indirectly, and it’s something that students do in high school.
Laura Vogt
We also spoke with a few students about what got them interested in EECS, how they learned more before attending Berkeley, and for some how they had to rebel against family expectations when choosing their college path.

Robert Nochez
My name is Robert Nochez. I’m a fourth year majoring in electrical engineering and computer sciences and then minoring in data science.

Laura Vogt
And how did you choose your major? Was there something in high school that made you go for it?

Robert Nochez
It’s kind of a fun little story. Basically, I’m from Roseville, and growing up, especially near a large Filipino community, and being Filipino myself, I was kind of pressured into going into healthcare, especially nursing, right? Nursing is big with the Filipino community, and so I was, like, always stuck on the idea of going into healthcare.

However, there was a big issue. I didn’t enjoy the sight of blood. However, I did know that I loved chemistry, and so I was like, okay, let me explore different avenues.

And so I started researching becoming a pharmacist. And from that, I was like, maybe this is not exactly what I want to do with my life.

However, I know that I am very interested in computers. I remember at times I would keep, you know, following the updates on like Intel, AMD and Nvidia, all these big tech companies and all these, like, you know, large manufacturers of computer parts.
And so from that, I decided to enroll in AP computer science principles at high school.

And then eventually, from, you know, my enjoyment of that course, I actually got involved with the pre college scholars program here at Berkeley.

And from that opportunity, I was actually able to take computer science 61A, after my junior year in high school during the summer.

And that got me a little bit exposed to actually wanting to pursue this specific major of EECS here at Berkeley.
I would definitely say that the major is very broad, and it’s done so in a good way, because you can specialize in a lot of things based on what you’re interested in.

Let’s say you’re more focused on hardware and you want to work on, you know, circuit components, or even like, microprocessors and stuff like that. You can do that pathway with EECS.

Let’s say you’re more focused on software, really, like algorithms or even databases and stuff like that. You can specialize in that.

And on top of that, the way that the EECS major is designed, and you know, the requirements that you have to take, there’s a lot of room for opportunity to take other courses, in other disciplines.

So, for example, it was very easy for me to actually do the data science minor, because I had a lot of overlap and because I met those prerequisites, but still, at the same time, I was gaining a lot of different knowledge, a lot of different skills, because I was taking data science course, which, you know, taught different things besides regular computer science courses that I’ve already been taught.

Laura Vogt
What kind of misconceptions have you heard about the EECS major or ideas that people have kind of put out that are you’re like, that’s not quite what it is?

Robert Nochez
I would say, for the most part, the one thing that I recognize, you know, just by realizing where I come from and my communities back at home, to actually being here at Berkeley, is that not everyone has had experience with computer science, and that is totally okay.

There are, as I said, a bunch of resources and opportunities to learn and grow and ultimately, like, if this is a field that you are truly interested in, I feel like you would just give it your all, and, you know, try to strive to be the best that you can.
You know, given how broad the major is, as I’ve said before, if there’s something that you are not interested in, you can always pivot to something else and find something that you truly love and would want to do with your life.

Berkeley is definitely what you make out of it. And if you can find that community that helps you, you know, be a better person, create the impact that you want to do, as well as like, you know, just be something that you can be a part of and enjoy, then it can make the experience for you.

Julian Rickenbach
My name is Julian Rickenbach, and I’m a senior EECS major, and I transferred from the BCC, which is Berkeley City College, and more generally, the Peralta colleges, which is a group of four colleges in the Bay Area.

Basically, short and sweet is that I knew I wanted to do game development, and for me, computer science was the way that I felt most comfortable getting into that industry. I’m still in the process of getting into that industry.

And on top of all that, I took one year of programming in high school, and I found it enjoyable, so I was already kind of hooked.
I’m most happy learning computer science when I am seeing myself make something that is just fundamentally cool, yeah, like seeing something on the screen, to me is the most interesting.

People like it to be kind of obvious or like a linear path, but it just doesn’t end up being that way in real life. So you kind of have to adapt.

And in this case, my adaptation was I tried learning game development on my own for a while, and that was really hard.
After a while, like a couple months, I just kind of realized I was sitting at a brick wall in terms of like, I could use a lot of fundamental knowledge of computer science, of math and physics that would help me a lot.

So I decided to go to community college.

Start a club, or join a club at CC. It has a huge side effect of giving you some community which hopefully transfers, which hopefully stays with those connections will stay with you and can provide you with some support during your time at a university like Berkeley.

Evan Sandoval
My name is Evan Sandoval. I’m currently a junior here studying EECS.

Laura Vogt
How did you end up choosing EECS as your major?

Evan Sandoval
I actually really like this question, because I feel I just have always been passionate about, like, electronics and computers, even since I was a little kid.

Like, I think the earliest I trace it back to was for the holidays, I got a little snap circuit set. It’s basically a bunch of almost Legos, but not really.

And you put like, a couple AAA batteries in it, and there’s this book of, like, all kinds of different circuits, and there’s interactive components with it. So you can build a circuit with a button, and when you press the button, the light turns on.

And then there’s another thing, like a motor and a fan. So you flip a switch and then push a button, and the fan, like, shoots up and flies around. It was a very interactive experience there.

And I think as I got older and started using computers more, I think it’s very common.

You’ll see a lot of computer science students say they can’t, oh, I played video games. And I was wondering, like, how does that work?

And from there, you start learning about, oh, how do I make my own games? Or how do I modify these games that I’m currently playing?

I messed around a lot with again, I think it’s not a common thing where like making, like Minecraft Mods too, was like something that I was pretty into.

And I think from there, you kind of also gain a lot of experience with just navigating file systems and computers and understanding the structure of how a computer is used from the user’s perspective.

And then you go a little bit deeper and you find out, like, oh, like, there’s these programming languages that enable these tools to be created.

Laura Vogt
My nephew is 11, and he’s taking a computer coding class right now that uses… he’s starting to learn the Python language.

Evan Sandoval
Yeah, I think Python is, it’s a great one to learn. I think as programming languages go, like, it’s the most similar to English language, but like, Python is a very powerful tool. Like, I still code in Python today, like, it’s a very ubiquitous tool, too, especially for a lot of newer technologies, like most machine learning libraries utilize Python.

Laura Vogt
I was excited for him to have a class that he could take. So I was like, sure, and now he’s doing something like that, and something called Scratch doing, math game mods.

Evan Sandoval
Yeah, Scratch, I’ve played that one too, but yeah, like, I think Scratch too is also very good, especially for like, the younger folks to learn more about, like, fundamentals, as opposed to, like, the actual language. You know, like, when you’re writing a programming language, it’s very formulaic at times, like you need to have an if and a colon, and then you need to have an indent here. If you have an else, you need to make sure that it’s indented properly.

Whereas, with more block coding languages like Scratch, I think you really learn more about sort of thinking about what you want your program to do. And you spend more time thinking about things like, okay, if this, do this, or else, do this. Or like, while this is true, execute these operations.

I was recently just talking about this with one of my friends in my Formula Electric club. Like I gained a research opportunity from a PhD who advises that club. I gained my internship from going to an event related to that club. I have met so many of my friends because of that club. And when I joined, when I first joined the club, like, could have never imagined that I would get all of these things out of it. And because of that, I think as a prospective student, I would say, like, number one advice is to just get out there, try things, join clubs, meet people.

That’s exactly what I did, and I feel like it’s served me pretty well.

Laura Vogt
I know I’ve said this the past couple of episodes, but Exploring Engineering is only the beginning of learning about a major. EECS is very broad, and there are only four perspectives on this major.

So I urge you to check out our podcast webpage, engineering.berkeley.edu/exploringengineering to explore the resources and links that are available for you.

And please, share this podcast with your friends, classmates, and schools, so that others can learn and explore what being an engineer means.