The mid-sized College of Engineering at UC Santa Barbara is consistently ranked among the upper echelon of engineering schools in the world. UCSB Engineering provides students with the direct academic mentorship they need to build a successful career and to complete degree programs on time. We are an interdisciplinary campus, where a culture of innovation drives the development of both fundamental science and applied technology solutions, while adding value to the economy in our region, our state, and the world. UCSB Engineering has proven itself to be one of the most successful environments for public-private research partnership in the nation; the deep, varied, and numerous connections forged with industry have resulted in hundreds of intellectual properties.

Our Departments & Programs

UCSB College of Engineering offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in seven departments and several affiliated programs. Our academic departments are Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Materials, Mechanical Engineering, and Technology Management. The college is also affiliated with the Media Arts & Technology Program, in which the research integrates digital and visual arts with technology; and the interdisciplinary graduate programs of Biomolecular Science & Engineering and Computational Science & Engineering. More than thirty engineering research centers and institutes affiliated with the College, our departments, and/or our faculty provide hubs for researchers from diverse departments and disciplines who have a shared interest in a particular subject.
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Enrollment

Undergraduate students: 1,823
Graduate students (PhD and MS): 733
Updated Fall 2023

Diversity 

The UCSB College of Engineering is committed to becoming a more-diverse and more-inclusive institution, one that supports, validates, and honors all individuals from every community. We pledge to work to ensure that all people receive equitable treament, have equal access to opportunities, and are supported to achieve their potential, both at UCSB and beyond. 

+ View our Commitment to Diversity page for more information

Research

UCSB Engineering has been ranked among the top two public universities in the world for engineering research for the past thirteen years (2011-2023), based on citations of research compiled by the Leiden Rankings.  Our Materials graduate program has been ranked #1 in the nation among public universities (US News and NRC) and in the top five among all universities, while our Chemical Engineering program has been ranked consistently among the top five public institutions. All of our graduate research programs were ranked in the top 5 for their disciplines (NRC, 2010). UCSB Engineering is home to the west coast hub of AIM Photonics, a national photonics technology manufacturing initiative, the nation's first Quantum Foundry, as well as one of the top NSF Materials Research Science & Engineering Centers in the country.
+ Explore our areas of engineering research and our research centers

Faculty

Three Nobel laureates, and sixteen elected members of the National Academy of Engineering are active faculty within the college. We also have five active members in the National Academy of Sciences and sixteen active faculty or researchers who are fellows of the National Academy of Inventors. Faculty have won technical awards in the Oscars, Emmys, and more. Countless awards have demonstrated the strength of our 160-plus faculty members, many of whom are world-renowned in their disciplines and are as dedicated to shared teaching and mentoring of students as they are to pursuing fundamental science and engineering solutions to large, complex problems that require the efforts of  interdisciplinary collaborative teams.
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Location

The UC Santa Barbara campus is located on the California coastline, between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Ynez Mountains, which rise 4,000 feet behind the city of Santa Barbara. College of Engineering buildings are located on the eastern, oceanfront side of the campus property.
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