The extensive departmental computing facilities include a network of work stations, minicomputers, and personal computers supporting a variety of operating systems and applications. A University-wide System Network Computing Center offers IBM supercomputer, and VAX and IBM mainframe power.

The department's Electronic Material and Device Laboratory is the only one of its kind in Louisiana to carry out interdisciplinary research in the areas of semiconductor material growth, characterization, device fabrication, and measurements. The laboratory has a 200 square foot class 100 clean room for photolithography. The department faculty is involved in the Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices (CAMD) established by the University for carrying out research in X-ray lithography for submicron devices.

The VLSI Systems Design Laboratory houses graphics terminals, state-of-the-art SUN work stations, and Berkeley CAD VLSI tools. The laboratory is used for instructional and research purposes, both for designing of smart silicon VLSI chips and for VLSI device modeling. Designs can be sent via electronic mail to Silicon Foundry (MOSIS) for chip fabrication.

The Communications, Control, and Signal Processing Laboratory supports research in automatic control, communications, and signal processing. The laboratory houses several high powered SUN work stations and personal computers, TV camera and signal acquisition hardware and software, process simulators and advanced system simulation software.

The Power Electronics Laboratory offers the student hands-on experience with several power electronic devices, such as AC to DC converters, AC voltage controller, and DC to DC converters many of them rated at more than 6 kilowatts. Also available are facilities for experimenting with new power electronic circuit designs capable of handling large amounts of power.

Over the last three years the sponsored research contracts exceeded $3.34 million. Recent research grants include:

• "High speed Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors"
• "Multichannel Switching in Optical Fiber Network"
• "Fault-Tolerant Neural Networks: Design Theory and Applications"
• "An Advisory Systems for Switching Power System Capacitors"
• "Robust Identification in H-Infinity"
• "Advancement of Gas Sensors Fabrication Technology and Testing in Simulated Chemical Environments"
• "Dynamic Clustering"
• "High Efficiency Monolithic Tandem Solar Cells"
• "Parallelizing Programs for Distributed Memory Multiprocessors"
• "Enhancement of Computer Vision and Realtime Sensor Processing"
• "Loop Transformations and Scheduling Techniques for Distributed Memory Processors"
• "Robust Stability and Stabilization of Systems with Real Parameter Uncertainty"
• "ROW: Complementary Pseudomorphic Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors"
• "Neural Network Approach Towards Logic Testing and Design-for-Testability"
• "New Information Technology for Financial Data Processing"
• "Theory and Design of Branch-and-Combine Clock Networks"
• "Alignment system for Anorad X- Ray Exposure Tool"
• "Control of HSPS and SVC for Enhancing Power System Stability"

Faculty research is supported by grants from federal, state and industrial sources, including: