The Promise of Moore to Come

It's been eight decades since the Alfred Fitler Moore School of Electrical Engineering was dedicated with great confidence and a telling prediction: “It will be the greatest school of its kind in the country.” Twenty-two years later, ENIAC blinked to life in the basement of the school and, as they say, the rest is history. Or is it?

The founding of the Moore School in the 1920s—previously the Department of Electrical Engineering in the Towne Scientific School—reflected the needs and ambitions of the times, and its earliest years were shaped in large part by its links to industry. In fact, the school’s benefactor Alfred Moore was an electrical manufacturer. Perhaps no one understood the importance of the industrial connection better than the school’s first dean, Harold Pender, who guided generations of electrical engineers through his Pender’s Handbook for Electrical Engineering. Moore School graduates populated the ranks of a profession whose time had come.

The years following ENIAC witnessed a dramatic transition and growth as computer science was spawned from the electrical engineering profession. By the early 1970s it became clear that the organization of knowledge in this field had entered a new phase. Computer science had become more than just an application of electrical engineering—it was now a field of study in its own right, with its own intellectual core. Once again, Penn was among those leading the charge. The Moore School was divided into three separate departments: Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, and Computer and Information Science.

Technology evolves continuously and so do the academic disciplines that support it. Today, Computer and Information Science, a descendent of the Moore School, is our largest department, housed in a beautiful new building all its own: Levine Hall. The two other heirs of the proud Moore legacy merged three years ago to become a single Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering. The faculty saw the valuable synergism of integrating “systems thinking,” firmly rooted in applied mathematics, with the empirical authority of electrical engineering, with its foundations in applied physics.

At the end of every academic year I have the privilege of attending the presentation of the senior design projects in electrical and systems engineering. I am constantly and ever more deeply awed by the imagination, complexity and creativity of the engineering achievements of our seniors. A tour around the room gives one a thrilling indication of the vitality and promise of this field, as well as an immeasurable satisfaction about the education Penn is imparting to the youngest new members of the Moore School family tree.

Our Electrical and Systems Engineering program is now under the direction of Daniel Koditschek, a prominent researcher in robotics and control theory who was recruited by Penn this year. You’ll enjoy reading more about him and his research in a special article on page 16 of this issue. As the newly appointed Chair of the ESE department, Dan has both the expertise and the vision to unite these disciplines. Dan views systems science as a broad philosophical, mathematical, and increasingly empirical approach to the material world, an approach that confers social impact upon clever physical designs.

Indeed, social impact lies at the heart of all we do at Penn Engineering. As we stand on the cusp of engineering’s next revolution—the interface of engineering, biology, and health care—the Moore School will be a key player once again. It's not all history after all.