Theodore (Ted) S. Rappaport
New York University, USA
Theodore (Ted) S. Rappaport is the David Lee/Ernst Weber Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineeringat the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) and is a professor of computer science at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He is also a professor of radiology at the NYU School of Medicine.
Rappaport serves as director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Industrial/University Collaborative Research Center for Wireless Internet Communications and Advanced Technology (WICAT), a national research center that involves five major universities and is headquartered at NYU-Poly. He is also the founding director of NYU WIRELESS, the world’s first academic research center to combine engineering, computer science, and medicine. Earlier, he founded two of the world’s largest academic wireless research centers: The Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG) at the University of Texas at Austin in 2002, and the Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group (MPRG), now known as Wireless@ at Virginia Tech, in 1990.
Rappaport is a pioneer in radio wave propagation for cellular and personal communications, wireless communication system design, and broadband wireless communications circuits and systems at millimeter wave frequencies. His research has influenced many international wireless-standards bodies, and he and his students invented the technology of site-specific radio frequency (RF) channel modeling and design for wireless network deployment – a technology now used routinely throughout wireless communications.
Rappaport has served on the Technological Advisory Council of the Federal Communications Commission, assisted the governor and CIO of Virginia in formulating rural broadband initiatives for Internet access, and conducted research for NSF, Department of Defense, and dozens of global telecommunications companies. He has over 100 U.S. or international patents issued or pending and has authored, co-authored, and co-edited 18 books, including the world’s best selling books on wireless communications and smart antennas.
In 1989, he founded TSR Technologies, Inc., a cellular radio/PCS software radio manufacturer that he sold in 1993 to what is now CommScope, Inc. (taken private in 2011 by Carlyle Group). In 1995, he founded Wireless Valley Communications, Inc., a pioneering creator of site-specific radio propagation software for wireless network design and management that he sold in 2005 to Motorola.
Rappaport received BS, MS, and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Purdue University, and is an Outstanding Alumni of his alma mater.