How to Find PhD Supervisors in Electrical Engineering (and Get Funded)

Electrical engineering is the one engineering field where "check their recent preprints" actually works the way it does in physics, because IEEE's own preprint server is built specifically around EE's core subject areas. It's also a field being reshaped in real time by CHIPS Act-era semiconductor funding, and one with a genuinely distinct international-student funding track most searches never turn up.

TechRxiv is EE's own preprint home, not an adjacent one

TechRxiv, launched by IEEE in January 2020, is explicitly scoped to electrical and electronics engineering, computer science, telecommunications, and adjacent technology fields, with over 150,000 downloads of its preprints to date. Unlike mechanical or civil engineering, where TechRxiv sits outside the field's core scope and tells you little either way, electrical engineering is squarely inside its intended coverage. A recent, active TechRxiv presence is a genuinely reliable signal here, closer to how arXiv functions for physicists than the more ambiguous read it gives in other engineering disciplines.

CHIPS Act funding is a real, current signal worth searching for

The CHIPS and Science Act appropriated $200 million specifically for semiconductor workforce training and education through NSF. NSF's Future of Semiconductors program, a public-private partnership with Ericsson, IBM, Intel, and Samsung, has funded 61 awards across 47 institutions totaling $45.6 million toward new semiconductor technology and manufacturing research. Separate NSF research traineeship grants tied to CHIPS Act priorities have funded specific doctoral and master's fellowship cohorts at individual universities. If you're targeting semiconductor-adjacent research, checking whether a specific lab or department carries a named CHIPS Act-era award is a concrete, currently relevant way to identify well-funded, actively hiring groups that a generic funding search would miss entirely.

SRC funding has two tracks, and one is genuinely open to international applicants

The Semiconductor Research Corporation's standard Graduate Fellowship Program requires US citizenship, permanent residency, refugee, or political asylum status, closing it off to most international applicants. But SRC separately runs an International Graduate Fellowship Program specifically for students at universities outside North America, developed in response to the needs of SRC's international member companies, with fellows expected to go on to work for an SRC member company or a faculty position after completing their PhD. It's a real, distinct track worth checking directly if you're applying from outside North America and working in semiconductor-adjacent research, rather than assuming SRC funding is automatically closed to you the way several other named US fellowships are.

How the funding timeline typically works

A common structure at strong ECE programs fully funds first-year students through a department fellowship for their first semester specifically so they can explore different research groups before committing, with an expectation that students identify a research advisor by their second semester. After that, funding generally shifts to a graduate research assistantship paid from that advisor's sponsored grants and contracts, commonly guaranteed for around five years given satisfactory progress. Our piece on how research grants actually fund PhD students covers the underlying mechanics of that grant-to-stipend process.

Industry co-funding is more visible here than in most fields

Beyond SRC's two fellowship tracks, individual companies run their own named PhD fellowship programs, and NSF's Future of Semiconductors partnership funds specific university projects directly alongside Ericsson, IBM, Intel, and Samsung. When you're assessing whether a specific lab can realistically fund you, checking for named industry fellowship recipients or company-sponsored projects on a lab's own page, alongside a standard federal grant search, is genuinely worth doing in electrical engineering specifically, since the field's funding picture is unusually shaped by direct industry investment right now.

A practical approach

• Use TechRxiv as a genuinely reliable activity check in EE, it's scoped to this field directly, unlike in mechanical or civil engineering.
• Search for CHIPS Act-era or NSF Future of Semiconductors funding at a target lab if you're interested in semiconductor-adjacent research, it's a current, concrete signal of active hiring.
• If you're an international applicant working in semiconductor research, check SRC's International Graduate Fellowship Program specifically, don't assume SRC funding is closed to you.
• Check for named industry sponsors and fellowship recipients on a lab's own page, not just a federal award database, industry co-funding is unusually visible in this field.

Once you've identified professors whose current, actively funded work genuinely fits your interests, GradScoutFunding searches professors by field and country, confirms they're actively publishing, and drafts a personalized outreach email grounded in a real recent paper for you to review and send yourself. Get started with 100 credits with no card required.

Common questions