Eye on the Future

There’s a wave of energy flowing through Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. It’s a feeling fueled by five years of strategic investment in faculty hiring, surging research funding and an ascent up the national college rankings that will propel the college into an even brighter future.

“We push excellence and we don't compromise,” said Stella Batalama, Ph.D., dean of the college and a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “It is a difficult thing. But as our successes add up, the faculty are energized.”

The momentum is growing. When Batalama began her tenure as dean in fall 2017, the institution had historically focused on teaching and wasn’t as active in research. Since then, the college’s research funding has grown 190% to a portfolio of $46 million in active grants today.

From 2020 to 2022, the College of Engineering was one of the top three fastest rising engineering colleges in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. The college’s graduate program made its first appearance in the rankings in 2024, earning a spot in the top 100 public institutions. The college climbed even higher in the 2025 graduate list, moving up to 91st position in the graduate rankings among public institutions.

Faculty and Funding

That trajectory has been shaped in part by exceptional hiring, according to Batalama.

By 2022, nearly all of FAU’s junior engineering faculty had won prestigious early career awards from the National Science Foundation or National Institutes of Health. These highly-competitive programs provide funding stability to junior faculty and an opportunity to emerge as leaders in their field by integrating education and research.

“Junior faculty are having great achievements here and are a great predictor of future success,” she said.

The college’s $46 million research portfolio – composed mostly of federal grants – is significant considering the relatively small size of the college with just 77 tenured and tenure-track faculty, she said.

All the more striking is how efficiently it was achieved. For example, of the 120 proposals submitted by engineering and computer science faculty to various agencies this year, a full 82, or 68%, were funded. That’s much higher than the rates at which funding agencies tend to grant funding requests, according to Batalama.

“That means that we submit a lot of high quality, successful proposals,” she said.

Over the past five years the college has grown a robust portfolio comprised of grants from:

• National Science Foundation (NSF) (37%)
• Department of Defense (32%)
• National Institutes of Health (11%)
• State of Florida and Industry and industry (19%)

“Such a funding distribution is a testament that our faculty address a broad range of research problems that are of interest to the state and the nation,” Batalama said.

Collaborative Research

Recent philanthropic grants, industry gifts and federal awards have established the college at the forefront of future-focused research and development including artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous systems, energy, biomedical engineering, cybersecurity and intelligent transportation through the founding of several university centers. Each center serves as a nexus of research, education and outreach.

A $1 million gift from Florida Power & Light Company in 2023 established the FPL Center for Intelligent Energy Technologies (InETech) housed at the college. This partnership between FPL and the College of Engineering drives smart technology research and workforce development.

The Center for Sensing, Monitoring, Analytics, Remote and Technology (SMART) Health, funded in 2022 through a seed grant from Judith and David Teller, is heading an interdisciplinary mission between health and engineering to improve care through technology and informatics.

The Center for Connected Autonomy and Artifical Intelligence (AI) is a leading hub for basic and applied research for the development of networked AI robotic systems in the oceans, ground, air, and space, supported by autonomous resilient machine-to-machine communications, robust multi-agent AI training, and real-time operational stage monitoring. It is supported by the Schmidt Foundation and has a $13 million federally-funded portfolio.

With the philanthropic support of the Gangal Nonprofit Foundation, the college established a 3D printing innovation center and printed circuit board microfabrication facility that was named after the generous donors Shiva and Sneh Lata Gangal.

The college has also been successful in highly competitive multi-university research partnerships. One such partnership with Columbia University, New York, Rutgers University, New Jersey, University of Central Florida, Orlando, and Lehman College, New York, led to the joint establishment of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Smart Streetscapes, a multi-million investment over the next 10 years. The center’s work lives at the interface of engineering and human behavior, demonstrating how advances in sensing technologies and cloud computing can help build safer communities.

In 2018, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Florida Department of Transportation funded FAU’s joint Freight Mobility Research Institute, another partnership. More recently, the same agencies supported the new joint Center for Regional Rural Connected Communities.

Student Success

While the College of Engineering is seeing the dividends of a five-year effort to bolster its research capacity, it hasn’t left its teaching mission behind. In fact, student achievement has followed the same upward trend.

The four-year graduation rate among engineering and computer science undergraduates more than doubled from 2019 to 2023. The college is particularly proud of its six-year graduation rate among recipients of the Pell Grant — a need-based federal assistance program for low-income students. This grew from 42% of Pell recipients in 2019 to 63% in 2023.

The college is preparing global citizens for highly skilled workforce environments through experiences beyond the classroom, including summer research opportunities, challenging competitions and community engagement projects. The college has overseen an incredible 545% growth in student internships while achieving a top job placement rate among engineering colleges in the Florida State University System, according to Batalama.

The parallel trends of a growing research portfolio, a multifaceted experiential learning environment and climbing graduation rates are all reflected in how the College of Engineering and Computer Science has performed in the U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges ranking. The college, which was missing from top rankings a few years ago, has risen to No. 103 among public institutions. The college debuted on the 2024 Graduate Rankings at No. 99 and has climbed No. 91 in the 2025 list.The rankings are based on measurable achievements like graduation rates and level of sponsored research. But they also account for an institution’s reputation. Peers in the field are taking notice as FAU College Engineering and Computer Science faculty pursue innovative research and lead students to the future.

“Our college's journey from excellence to eminence is not just about what we've achieved,” Batalama said. “It's about where we're headed next. The future of engineering begins here."