Interested in pursuing graduate studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering at U of T?
ECE Grad Research Days are an opportunity to explore grad study possibilities in a hands-on environment by connecting one-on-one with faculty.
A select group of prospective students are invited for a funded visit to U of T to meet with a potential supervisor, learn more about our research programs, and experience how our community supports innovation, collaboration, and real-world impact.
A limited number of spots are available for this program; we encourage you to apply early!
Complimentary accommodation and travel to Toronto are provided to successful applicants.
How do I apply to participate?
- Review our admissions requirements to confirm your eligibility. Preference is given to those who have already applied to either the MASc or the PhD in ECE for September 2026. Consideration will be given to those who have not yet applied.
- Review our participating faculty below to learn more about their area of expertise.
- Fill out the application form.
Preference given to:
- Already applied to the MASc or PhD program with ECE
- Residents of Canada
Participating Faculty
The following faculty members are available to meet with prospective students during Graduate Research Days. Participants will identify their preferred faculty to meet with on the application form.
Margaret Chapman
Margaret Chapman received her PhD degree at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences in 2020, where she was advised by Professor Claire Tomlin. Professor Chapman received her BS degree (with Distinction) and her MS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 2012 and 2014, respectively.
Her research focuses on bridging the gap between robust and stochastic optimal control via risk measure theory, with emphasis on safety-critical applications in healthcare and sustainable cities. She is especially interested in the following open challenges: 1) developing risk-sensitive control methods that scale to high-dimensional systems while providing safety or quality-of-approximation guarantees by exploiting domain-specific structure; 2) developing safety analysis methods that rigorously integrate physics-based models and data-driven models with non-asymptotic quality-of-approximation guarantees; and 3) inspiring scholarship that is focused on creating, not technologies for convenience, but technologies that promote the safety and well-being of the planet and its people.
Memberships/Awards
- US National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
- Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study
- Terman Engineering Scholastic Award
- Tau Beta Pi, Engineering Honours Society
Mark Jeffrey
Mark Jeffrey received the PhD degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2019, and the MASc and BASc degrees from the University of Toronto in 2011 and 2009, respectively. Broadly, his research interests are in the areas of computer architecture and computer systems, with an emphasis on parallel computer architecture, accelerator architectures, parallel programming models, compilers, and hardware/software co-design for parallelization, performance, and efficiency. Dr. Jeffrey spent his postdoc year as a Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research, collaborating with production teams to improve datacenter systems for distributed training in machine learning. He has also worked in software engineering at Google, Epson, and a Y-combinator startup called AeroFS.
Memberships/Awards
- Facebook Fellowship, 2017
- IEEE Micro Top Picks Honourable Mention, 2016
- IEEE Micro Top Picks, 2015
Xilin Liu
Xilin Liu obtained his PhD degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining the University of Toronto, he held industrial positions at Qualcomm Inc. in California, where he contributed to the research and development of a series of cutting-edge integrated circuit (IC) products in high-volume production, including the world’s first 5G chipset. He was a visiting scholar at Princeton University in 2014.
Professor Liu’s research focuses on integrated circuits and system design for emerging applications, such as brain-machine interfaces, edge artificial intelligence, and wireless and wireline communication. His team has published papers in prestigious journals like Nature Electronics and the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), and at top conferences such as the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). He has received numerous Best Paper Awards at renowned international conferences.
Professor Liu is currently a Senior Member of the IEEE. He serves as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (TBioCAS) and the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs (TCAS-II). He was the local co-chair of BioCAS 2023 in Toronto, Canada. He is a committee member of several CASS and SSCS conferences and an SRP committee member of ISSCC.
Memberships/Awards
- Senior Member of IEEE
- Member of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS)
- Member of IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS)
- Member of IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS)
- Member of IEEE Brain Community
- ECE Department Teaching Award, 2022
- Finalist: Grand challenge at IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS), 2022
- Finalist: International Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Award, 2018
- Best Student Paper Award (2nd place): IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), 2017
- IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) Predoctoral Achievement Award, 2016
- Best Paper Award (1st place): IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS), 2015
- Best Paper Award (biomedical track): IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), 2014
Georgia Pierrou
Georgia Pierrou is an Assistant Professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, Canada. Before joining the University of Toronto, she worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Power Systems Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where she was advised by Prof. Gabriela Hug. Georgia received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from McGill University, Canada, under the supervision of Prof. Xiaozhe Wang in 2021, and the Diploma degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 2017. Her research interests include stability analysis, optimization, and control of electric power systems.
Membership/Awards
- Best Poster Award – Center for Sustainable Future Mobility, ETH Zurich (2023)
- W. Ambridge Prize (2022)
- Rising Stars in EECS (2022)
- Green Talents Award (2021)
- Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation Fellowship (2017-2019)
- McGill Graduate Excellence Fellowship (2019-2021)
- Constantina N. Frangouli Family Scholarship (2019)
- Member, IEEE Power and Energy Society
Jianan Yao
Jianan Yao is a tenure-stream Assistant Professor at The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. He previously worked as an applied scientist at the Automated Reasoning Group of Amazon Web Services (AWS). He obtained his B.Eng. from Tsinghua University and his Ph.D. in computer science from Columbia University, advised by Professor Ronghui Gu.
Jianan Yao‘s research spans the fields of programming languages, distributed systems, and machine learning, with the overarching goal of ensuring the correctness and security of safety-critical systems software through formal verification. He is particularly interested in automating the verification process, reducing the proof burden and specialized expertise required, thus facilitating its broader real-world application. To achieve higher automation, his research involves a combination of new verification pipelines, classical algorithms, and machine learning models, and has proven effective across various domains, including sequential programs, distributed protocols, and blockchain systems.
Awards
- Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award, OSDI 2021
Dr. Daifei Zhang
Dr. Daifei Zhang is currently an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, a position he has held since October 2024. Before joining the University of Toronto, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Power Electronic Systems Laboratory (PES) at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Dr. Zhang received his B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering and Automation from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST, China) in 2017, followed by an M.Sc. (2019) and a Ph.D. (2023) in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from ETH Zurich. In 2016, he participated in a one-year exchange program at RWTH Aachen University, Germany.
Dr. Zhang’s research interests include advanced power conversion techniques for grid modernization and transportation electrification, cryogenic power electronics, and design methodologies for sustainable power electronics.
Dr. Shurui Zhou
Dr. Shurui Zhou is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. She obtained her PhD in May 2020 from the Institute for Software Research, School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Her research focuses on helping distributed and interdisciplinary software teams to collaborate more efficiently, especially in the context of modern open-source collaboration forms, fork-based development, and interdisciplinary teams when building AI-enabled systems or scientific software. To achieve her goals, she combines advances in tooling and software engineering principles with insights from other disciplines that study human collaboration (e.g., Organizational Behaviour), for which she combines and mixes a wide range of research methods.
Professor Zhou has collaborated with researchers from different universities with different backgrounds. These collaborations have resulted in ACM and IEEE publications, which have been presented at international conferences in software engineering.
Application Process & Important Dates
Applications are due on Tuesday, February 17, 2026.
Selected applicants will be notified on a rolling basis. All selected applicants will be notified by Friday, February 20, 2026.
If accepted into the program, you will receive an email from the ECE Graduate Office to arrange a short virtual meeting.
Successful applicants’ flight/travel and accommodation expenses can be incurred between the February 1 and March 9, 2026.