An official "Woot!" to Alex, Nadia and Michigan. Sorry you were scooped, but it sounds like you've actually identified the underlying problem.

In most of the US at least, computer engineering is about the design and low-level use of computers. So VLSI, computer architecture, embedded systems, systems programming.

I've never heard the term used they way you are using it. Wikipedia seems to agree with me...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_engineering