Dr. Andrea Goldsmith stands as a preeminent leader in electrical engineering with transformative contributions to wireless communications and academic administration. She currently serves as the Dean of Engineering and Applied Science and the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Princeton University, a position she has held since 2020 after a distinguished 21-year career at Stanford University where she was the Stephen Harris Professor of Engineering. A graduate of UC Berkeley with B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering, she brings unique perspective from her four years as a systems engineer at a Silicon Valley defense communications startup before entering academia. Her leadership at Princeton has overseen the school's largest and fastest expansion of disciplinary and interdisciplinary faculty and graduate students in its history, with notable success in advancing diversity through hiring practices that have resulted in 54% women and 23% underrepresented minority faculty appointments.
Dr. Goldsmith's pioneering research in wireless communications systems has fundamentally shaped modern approaches to spectrum utilization, network capacity, and connectivity solutions across diverse environments. Her theoretical contributions to information theory and communication theory have provided foundational frameworks for optimizing wireless network performance, documented in her authoritative textbook Wireless Communications and two additional volumes on MIMO systems and cognitive radio. She has translated these theoretical insights into practical applications through her co-founding of two successful technology companies: Quantenna Communications, which developed high-speed wireless chipsets, and Plume WiFi, which created software-defined wireless networking solutions. Her extensive intellectual property portfolio includes 29 patents that have influenced industry standards and implementations across the telecommunications sector.
Beyond her technical contributions, Dr. Goldsmith has emerged as a transformative leader in scientific policy and professional community development. She serves on President Biden's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology where she co-chairs working groups on US technology competitiveness and basic research revitalization while also contributing to semiconductor policy initiatives. As the founding Chair of the IEEE Board of Directors Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, she has driven institutional changes that have reshaped professional ethics and inclusion practices across the engineering community. Her current membership on the boards of Intel, Medtronic, and Crown Castle reflects her standing as a trusted advisor at the highest levels of technology industry leadership, and in February 2025 she was announced as president-elect of Stony Brook University, a position she will assume on August 1, 2025, further extending her impact on the future of higher education and technological advancement.
