Andrea Goldsmith is a giant in the wireless industry and has been a driving force for the advancement of the wireless communications industry since the early 1990’s.
In 1994, Andrea joined the faculty at California Institute of Technology (CalTech) as an assistant professor. In 1998, she was recruited to Stanford University and still holds an emeritus faculty position there. It was at Stanford where she pioneered the concepts of adaptive coding and adaptive multi-level modulations found in all of today’s modern wireless communications. She also found fundamental results about the duality of multiple-user communication channels and the use of dirty paper coding, which led to vast understanding and optimization of modulation and coding methods, as well as the study and optimization of MIMO methods that are used in today’s 4G and 5G cellphone and Wi-Fi technologies.
As a top technical expert in the wireless field, Andrea is part of President Biden’s Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) where she has helped the USA position the wireless and chip industries for the future.
Andrea served as president of the Stanford Faculty Senate. In 2020, she was named as the Dean of Engineering at Princeton University, a position she holds today. At Princeton, she oversees the entire engineering faculty, and has also launched a university research center in wireless communications called Wireless-NextG. She has authored three globally adopted textbooks, and is a serial entrepreneur who founded the companies Quantenna and Accelera (later merged into Plume WiFi). Both companies played a major role in the offload of cellphone traffic to WiFi.
Recently elected into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Andrea is also an IEEE Fellow, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), and has received numerous international medals, awards, and recognitions. Andrea serves on the Board of Directors of Intel, Crown Castle, and Medtronic. She was also named a Marconi Fellow – the first woman ever to receive the prestigious award in the history of the society.
Inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame in 2024.