ECE Core Undergraduate Curriculum

We live in a world where electronic devices are ubiquitous. They operate your phone, computer, car, and coffee maker, but do you know how they work? It isn’t magic and yet most people have little idea how they function much less how to go about designing them. This course will provide you with a foundation for exploring electrical and computer engineering, where you will learn how to analyze and build electronic circuits that are the backbone of our society today. You will learn not only the underlying circuit theory but also hands-on laboratory techniques and the engineering communication skills that are crucial for the complex design problems facing the modern engineer.

This course assumes no prior exposure to electrical engineering theory. Feel free to sign up if you are curious about electrical and computer engineering! Most students find they spend a decent amount of time on this class per week given the amount of material that the course covers. 

This course includes hands-on experiences and you will typically spend one class session each week designing, building, and verifying the circuits covered in lecture. You will use the Analog Discovery 2, which the department loans out to students for the duration of the core course sequence. 

Prerequisite: Must have completed APMA 1110 (Calc 2) and ENGR 1010 (Engineering foundations 1)

Quotes from past course evaluations:

• "I highly enjoyed my experience in Applied Circuits and feel more excited than before about my prospective academic journey in electrical engineering."
• "I came into this course with barely any prior knowledge and experience with circuits and I remember feeling very nervous when I did not have any clue how to do the first lab. I feel like this class gave a very good introduction into circuit analysis and physically building circuits on the breadboard."
• "I really enjoyed Applied Circuits because it gave me a strong hands-on introduction and understanding of how electrical components work together in real-world applications. The labs were especially engaging and helped reinforce the concepts we learned in lectures."
• "I enjoyed the course. It was one of the faster paced classes I've taken but probably one of the classes I've learned the most from. Overall, I'm glad I took the course and found it highly educational."

What will you learn? By the end of the course, you will...

• Use fundamental circuit laws to analyze a circuit (the magic behind the curtain).
• Be able to break down a complex circuit or system into simpler parts for analysis (this is more useful than you may realize).
• Utilize good laboratory procedure when measuring, testing, and recording results (the fun hands-on part).
• Be able to clearly explain an experiment, from the theory to the setup to the presentation data and results in a concise and understandable format (yes, communication is an engineering skill as much as math).
• Be able to coordinate and communicate with peers on a lab or project (because modern engineering is a team sport).
• Recognize the value and limitations of engineering models (using the right tools for the job).
• Recognize how we use circuits in everyday life (where the magic happens).

From a topics standpoint, we will examine:

• Electrical quantities (units, power, & energy)
• Resistive circuit analysis (Ohm’s law, KCL, KVL, series & parallel, volt & current division)
• Systems of equations (node & mesh, applying linear algebra)
• Network Theorems (Thévenin, superposition)
• Operational Amplifiers
• RC, RL, and RLC Circuits utilizing differential equations with constant forcing functions
• Phasors
• Complex impedance and circuit analysis

What is the course structure? Circuits has a mix of traditional lecture-based content with associated homework assignments and a studio-section where we complete hands-on activities during class. There are typically two midterms and a final as well as a group-based class project. 

ECE2330 (Digital Logic Design) introduces you to the analysis and design of digital systems from switches to gates to a simple CPU. 

Prerequisite: None

Quotes from past course evaluations:

• "This class was an interesting introduction to a lot of concepts for me. Entering with very little knowledge of the material, I was still able to learn and complete the assignments."

• "The hands-on learning activities really cemented the course concepts for me."

What will you learn? The analysis and design of combinational and sequential components includes multiplexers and demultiplexers, decoders and encoders, comparators, adders and ALU, registers and register files, counters and timers, RTL design, culminating in the design of a simple computer system. 

DLD is a great entry course if you are at curious about ECE, especially if you are debating computer engineering or computer science. We do not assume any specific prerequisite knowledge as this is an entry-level course, so feel free to give it a try! 

What is the course structure? The course schedule is structured around the design of a simplified computer system, using a "hardware description language." Throughout the semester, you complete learning activities that provide the knowledge and skills needed to build a simple computer system design. For each portion of the computer system design, you will develop an analytical design that satisfies the requirements, and then numerically verify that the circuit you specify satisfies the requirements with a digital circuit simulator. We spend some class sessions lecturing on new material and other class sessions working together on these learning activities. There are also a handful of textbook homeworks and typically two exams. 

Electronics shape our lives every day in numerous ways, from cell phones, to the computer systems in cars, to WiFi networks that connect you to the internet. The electronics industry is global, with designers, fabrication facilities and consumers located around the globe. The pace of change in the field of electronics is very rapid, both at the device and system levels. It is almost certain that the devices that we study in this course will undergo significant improvements in both power handling and miniaturization by the time you graduate, and there is a strong possibility that we will see new "everyday" devices over this same time period.

To be successful as an engineer in this field, it will be important to learn to understand devices that they may not have been previously familiar with and be able to apply them to previously unseen problems. One of the "big picture" goals of this course is to develop approaches for dealing with new, possibly incomplete data, and to integrate this understanding into the design of systems not previously seen in a traditional lecture-based environment.

Unlike the analysis of passive circuits you learned about in the applied circuits course, the analysis of circuits that employ active devices is a very non-linear process; frequently, no closed form solutions are possible. Thus, we use simplifying models and simulations. Unfortunately, both are approximations, and may not be totally applicable under all circumstances. Understanding modeling and simulation - both strengths and limitations - is another of the "big picture" goals of this course. In this course we will address the fundamental operation, characteristics, and design of circuits that power all the devices we use every day through a mixture of traditional lecture presentations and learning activities that include analysis and design problems solved in a group and laboratory environment.

Pre or Corequisite: APMA 2130 ODE and ECE 2700 Signals and Systems. Prerequisite: ECE 2300 Applied Circuits.

Quotes from past course evaluations:

• "I really liked the course overall especially the satisfaction of building the final project. It was a lot of work though."
• "This course was one of the best courses I have ever taken in my educational career simply because of the project-based learning, the clear lectures which broke down complicated concepts into simple terms, and the amazingly supportive team of TAs and professors that were available to guide my learning."

What will you learn? By the end of the course, you should be able to:

1. Identify and describe the functionality and behavior of various electronic components such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors, diodes and op-amps.
2. Analyze, describe, and solve, simple DC and AC circuits using Ohm’s law, Kirchhoff’s laws and basic network theorems.
3. Utilize electronic measurement instruments, such as multimeters and oscilloscopes to measure, verify and debug circuit functionality.
4. Evaluate the effectiveness of an electronic circuit to perform a specific function using figures of merit, and communicate the relative merit of different designs.
5. Determine the limits and usefulness of various models and approximations.
6. Design and construct a project.
7. Appreciate how electronic circuits enable a variety of critical applications.
8. Demonstrate written technical communication skills. 

What is the course structure? The course is broken up into a series of modules, each with a similar structure of activities and assessments and most lasting 1 week. To make the most of the in-class synchronous time, much of the lecture material will be delivered online and asynchronously via videos that you watch before coming to class. Most of the in-class time is then spent on hands-on learning laboratories and a semester-long project. Homeworks are designed to be completed during class time with the help of teaching assistants. 

Photos from the 2025 Fall section of Electronics 

Develops tools for analyzing signals and systems in continuous and discrete-time, for controls, communications, signal processing and machine learning. Primary concepts are the representation of signals and linear systems in the time domain (convolution, differential equations, state-space representation) and in the frequency domain (Fourier/Laplace analysis) including practical programming examples. 

Pre or Coreq: APMA 2130 

Prerequisite: ECE 2300

An embedded computer is designed to efficiently interact directly with its physical environment. This lab-based course explores architecture and interface issues relating to the design, evaluation and implementation of embedded systems. Topics include hardware and software organization, power management, digital and analog I/O devices, memory systems, timing and interrupts. 

Prerequisites: ECE 2300 and ECE 2330 and CS 2130

Our Capstone is where our students shine! Check out how capstone works and some previous capstone projects on our ECE Capstone page.

Design, analysis and testing of an electrical system to meet specific needs, considering applicable standards, health, safety, welfare, and societal impacts as well as tradeoff and constraint considerations. Semester-long team project develops physical prototype (not simulation). Counts major design experience for students in ECE. 

Prerequisites ECE 3430 and ECE 2700 and 4th year standing

Learn about and experiment with machine learning algorithms using Python. Applications include image classification, removing noise from images, and linear regression. Students will collect and interpret data, learn machine learning theory, build systems-level thinking skills required to strategize how to break the problem down into various functions, and to implement, test and document those functions. 

Prerequisite: CS 111X

Student testimonial: 

" As a BSCS student, this was my first AI/ML course I took at UVA. I enjoyed how the course focused on both the applications and mechanisms behind machine learning concepts, which culminated into a fun end-of-semester project (I made a ML model that can play Tetris!). Additionally, the class is also sprinkled with snippets of more advanced topics such as neural networks and large language models, along with recommended research papers that I explored to further fuel my fascination. Come to office hours!" - Austin Trinh, Intro to ML TA Fall 2024

Introduces computer architecture and provides a foundation for the design of complex synchronous digital devices, focusing on: 1) Established approaches of computer architecture, 2) Techniques for managing complexity at the register transfer level, and 3) Tools for digital hardware description, simulation, and synthesis. Includes laboratory exercises. Prerequisites: ECE 2330 Digital Logic Design and CS 2130 Computer Systems and Organization 1.

Student testimonial: 

"Computer Architecture is a must for students to understand the high-level architectural implications of circuit design. Prof. DeLong does an excellent job of taking concepts from DLD and showing how they translate into implementing a full CPU, and then showing how the design can be modified to include certain important design elements." - Student from Computer Architecture, 2024

Ultimately, picking a focus path is about finding the right fit. If there was a single “best” focus path, we wouldn’t have multiple! Your goal is to find the best focus path for you. Here are a few strategies you can use to pick a focus path:

1. Each focus path corresponds to different types of careers it will best prepare you for. Talk to faculty in the area about these and see which one sounds like the best fit for you.
2. Read the syllabus for or visit one of courses for one of the upper-level classes listed for a focus path. See if the content in that course excites you.
3. Think about which of your previous courses you have enjoyed the most. Try to focus more on the course material than on the instructor style or the instructor’s personality since you’ll have different instructors going forward. Did you like modeling physical systems and then building them and having them come to life in circuits and electronics? Then maybe consider CHIPS or E2P. Did you enjoy the mix of coding and hardware in embedded systems? Then maybe consider robotics. Did you like the modeling of systems in code and math in signals and systems? Then maybe consider machine learning.
4. If you have room in your schedule for two electives, try taking a course from two different focus paths.
5. Talk with upperclassmen! Ask them what they have learned and how it has served them in internships and what type of jobs they are considering.
6. Talk to your advisor. This website is made to give an overview of the focus paths, but your decision is unique to you and your advisor can help you think about how your interests align with the different focus paths. 

No matter which focus path you choose, know that you have already selected an amazing major that will prepare you for a wide variety of jobs.

Finally, you’ll see that many of our faculty span more than one focus path. You can always chart your own course and combine electives from multiple focus paths. 

No, you do not need ECE 2200 if you have Physics 2 credit either from transfer credit or from taking PHYS 2410 and 2419 at UVa. If you have not taken Physics 2 yet, we highly recommend taking ECE 2200 - our students enjoy the class and you will have an ECE instructor. 

Please see the answer on the CS advising webpage here:: https://uvacsadvising.org/courses.html#which-cs1-course-should-i-take 

Yes. So does linear algebra, which most of our faculty highly recommend. 

You can search the Archived Records page for more past requirements or to find the records page for other majors. Here are some recent years:

• EE major for 2024-2025
• EE major for 2023-2024