Edward J. Coyle
Founder, VIP Consortium, Inc.
GRA Eminent Scholar
John B. Peatman Distinguished Professor
Director, Arbutus Center for the Integration of
Research and Education
Georgia Institute of Technology
Edward J. Coyle is the Chair of the nonprofit VIP Consortium, the John B. Peatman Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. He was a co-founder of the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) Program, which creates vertically integrated project teams that address technical challenges for local community service organizations. To expand the scope of problems that can be addressed and to enable all students on campus to participate, he founded the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Program. In VIP, large-scale, long-term, multidisciplinary teams of undergraduates are embedded in the research, design, discovery, and creative projects of faculty. This ensures the long-term interest of the faculty and thus the longevity and productivity of their team. VIP Projects can now be found in every discipline and many of them address one or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Research conducted on VIP has shown it is a high impact program that both enhances students’ leadership skills while achieving equitable participation by and outcomes for underrepresented minorities, women, first generation students, and transfer student. VIP@GT currently has 88 VIP teams that span the campus and has an enrollment of 2000 students per semester.
The VIP Consortium currently consists of 48 universities around the world that have adopted the VIP Program. The Consortium was selected by ABET, the primary accreditor for engineering and technology education, to receive their 2019 Innovation Award. Dr. Coyle was a co-recipient of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering’s 2005 Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education. The EPICS Program was the recipient of the first Annual Governor’s Award for Volunteerism from the State of Indiana. Dr. Coyle was a co-recipient of the 1997 Chester F. Carlson Award for Innovation in Engineering Education.
Dr. Coyle’s research interests include: systemic reform of higher education; signal and information processing; and, wireless and sensor networks. In 1998, Dr. Coyle was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for his contributions to the theory of nonlinear signal processing.