Leandro R. Maciel ,

Ph.D.

Polytechnic Alumni Association - International Board of Directors (Term ending August 31, 2021)

Starting from a position at AT&T Bell Labs right after obtaining his Ph.D. degree from New York University Tandon School of Engineering (then Polytechnic University) in 1993, Leandro has contributed to many relevant technological transformations in our society over the last 25 years.  The wireless revolution was his starting point; participating in the Personal Communication System (PCS) spectrum definition while working for Pacific Telesis, then being responsible for the design, deployment and optimization of wireless networks in major cities throughout Latin America for AT&T, subsequently Lucent Technologies.  Along the way, Leandro has written papers to better understand the radio channel for mobile communications, most notably, the “Unified Approach to Prediction of Propagation over Buildings for All ranges of Base Station Antenna Height,” which received the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society's 1993 Neal Shepherd Award best paper.

From the wireless data revolution to the current network virtualization process and the IoT envisioned growth, Leandro expanded his areas of responsibility and managed large groups of engineers, deploying and providing technical support to systems such as OSS/BSS, IPTV, Payment and Charging, Customer Experience, IMS, and VoLTE, constantly evolving his organization (managing up to 800+ engineers) into a service and software oriented culture.  A special achievement was the creation of a strong team of network security consultants and security solution integrators.  In 2005, given the infancy of the cybersecurity technology, his team developed a solution, based on Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) concepts, that was successfully implemented in 3 network operators throughout 2015.  The solution provided IP traffic control (offloading congested networks), implementing security policies against hackers, and prevented Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, to list a few applications.

During his current career in the telecommunication industry, Leandro keeps the focus on delivering mission critical networks throughout many corporate mergers and acquisitions.  He participated in the creation of Lucent Technologies from AT&T in 1997, the Alcatel and Lucent merger in 2007, and the Alcatel-Lucent acquisition by Nokia in 2016.  Leandro currently holds a corporate position in the Global Service Center at the Nokia’s Software Division.