Among the 43 state higher education institutions in Romania, "Gh. Asachi" Technical University of Iasi has the oldest tradition in engineering education. Besides, it is the second in size among the technical universities of Romania. It has over 1200 teaching staff and researchers who provide training for more than 11000 students within 10 faculties. Our university offers 5 year programs awarding the degree of "Engineer" (Eng.), as well as postgraduate programs awarding the degrees of Master (M.Sc.) and Ph.D.
The Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications was set up in the academic year 1990-1991, and is currently being attended by about 1000 students. Specialized education in the field of Electronics started in Iasi with the setting up of the School of Electricity at the "Al. I. Cuza" University, in 1911. After the establishment of the Polytechnic Institute in Iasi in 1937, topics of Electronics were taught as part of the courses on Radio-techniques, Techniques of Weak Currents and Industrial Electronics. Beginning with the academic year 1971-1972, the Department of Applied Electronics was included in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, and in 1975 it became the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications. Since 1990 it became one of the ten faculties of the Technical University "Gh. Asachi" of Iasi.
The group of Signals, Circuits and Systems (SCS) is part of the Department of Fundamentals of Electronics of the Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications. The group consists of 2 professors, one associate professor, 2 lecturers and 3 teaching assistants. Since 1995 our group coordinates a master program in analog and digital signal processing. Moreover, 11 PhD students are preparing their theses under the coordination of professor Liviu Goras.
In the last years the group has been involved in basic research in the domain of nonlinear circuits and systems and nonlinear signal processing, Cellular Neural Networks (CNN's), analog and discrete recurrent neural networks, synchronization in chaotic systems and, recently, in analog filter design. It also organized various scientific meetings as part of the Romanian IEEE Chapter of Circuits and Systems.
Since 1993, the SCS group organizes the biannual International Symposium on Signals, Circuits, and Systems, in cooperation with the Circuits and Systems chapter of IEEE Romania Section. The technical program of the symposium has been organized with the help of researchers from IMT Neuchatel, Switzerland, among which Michael Ansorge (principal assistant) has been member of the organizing committee since the edition of 1997.