 In 1946 a colleague at the Labs, Milton Boone, a professor from Ohio State University on leave at Bell Labs during the war, encouraged Mueller to help set up a vacuum tube lab and run the communications group at Ohio State.Moving to Columbus, Mueller taught electrical engineering and the new field of system engineering, and continued his research, focusing his PhD thesis on dielectric antennas.Upon obtaining his doctorate in physics in 1951, he became associate professor of electrical engineering.