Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology - Department of Electrical Engineering

Department of Electrical Engineering

The department of Electrical Engineering (EED) was established in 1935 with an intake of 20 students for certificate courses and subsequently started Bachelors Degree programme in 1940 and produced its first graduate in 1943. A new phase of major developments in the department started during third five-year plan when the intake was raised to 90.

The UGC sanctioned the funds for the additional space, equipments and staff to meet the requirements of the increased intake. While implementing the new schemes, changes and modifications were made in the curriculum of the B.Sc. Engineering course in order to be at par with the International standards. A postgraduate course in “Instrumentation and Control”, the first postgraduate course in the Faculty of Engineering & Technology, was sanctioned and started in 1964 with an intake of 10 students. During the fourth five-year plan, the number of postgraduate course increased to three with a total intake of 25 students with scholarship. The department was bifurcated in 1988 with creation of a separate Deptt. of Electronics Engg. In effect 60 UG and 34 PG (With two streams; Power System & Drives and Instrumentation & Control) intake were left with the EED.

The EED, in its efforts to improve the academic qualifications of its staff, had been availing various National and International scholarships to send the faculty members abroad. However, the greatest boost to this came with the introduction of quality improvement programme (QIP) by the Government of India. Till now, quite a good number of teachers have made use of this programme to develop expertise in various areas of Electrical Engineering.

With the rejoining of these faculty members to the EED the research work has been accelerated. The number of research publications in various reputed national and international journals and active participation of the faculty members in various conferences/seminars/symposiums/workshop has considerably increased during the last two decades.

The first Ph.D. in the Faculty of Engineering & Technology, Aligarh Muslim University was produced by this department in 1977. Since then a good number of Ph.D students are enrolled and successfully complete their studies.

Presently (2006-07) 13 Ph.D. students are enrolled in the EED. Further, the faculty members of the EED have till date, published more than 800 research papers. The EED has organised several short-term training courses and the national level seminars/conferences for young Engineers in industries and academics.

Major Thrust Areas Of The Departments:

Although the department is putting all the sincere effort to grow in multi dimensions in several areas of Electrical Engineering but some of the identified thrust areas are:

Power System Dynamics and Control including Parallel AC/DC & Simultaneous AC/DC Transmission system. High Voltage Engineering with special emphasis on the development of Superconducting and insulating materials. Power Electronics and Drives focusing on the development of novel converter topologies and multi-phase motor drives. Renewable Energy Sources with effort in optimising the tapping of energy from solar photo-voltaic systems. Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing with orientation towards bio-engineering.