Professor Ted Rappaport Honored by Major Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Societies

Theodore (Ted) S. Rappaport, who serves as the David Lee/Ernst Weber Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and Founding Director of NYU WIRELESS, a premier center for wireless communications research, has recently received two major recognitions: elevation to Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and election as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

IEEE is the world’s largest technical organization with about 500,000 members. Being named a Life Fellow is reserved for individuals who have made significant and enduring impacts on technology and the advancement of the engineering profession. This distinction recognizes Rappaport's sustained and lasting contributions to the field of electrical and computer engineering, as well as his exemplary service to the IEEE community throughout his career.

ACM is the world's largest computer science technical society, with over 100,000 members. The grade of ACM Fellow recognizes the top 1% of members for outstanding contributions to computing and information technology in the field of Computer Science. Rappaport’s fellowship citation is “For research contributions to wireless networks.”

While Rappaport — consistently one of the most cited researchers in the world — is perhaps best known for demonstrating the viability and versatility of the millimeter-wave radio spectrum for wireless telecommunications, his purview is much broader, including pioneering research with his students and thought leadership that paved the way for Wi-Fi in the late 1980’s, and the first digital cell phone standards used in America, as well as the E-911 emergency location technologies used by all cell phones today. He and his students are also credited with creating the approaches used to design and deploy wireless networks in and around buildings, the creation of a probability distribution used to model modern wireless channels, and the development of a mathematical theory for evaluating energy efficiency and sustainability in any communications link. He also quantified the impact of ionizing radiation on the survivability and life expectancy of immunocompromised blood cancer stem cell transplant survivors (of which he is one).

Also a tenured professor in the NYU Computer Science department in the Courant School of Mathematics, and a tenured professor in the Radiology department at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Rappaport has co-authored over 400 papers and 20 books, including the most cited books on wireless communications, smart antennas, simulation of communication systems, and millimeter-wave communications which have been translated into eight languages. He co-founded two wireless companies, TSR Technologies and Wireless Valley Communications, which were sold to publicly traded companies.

Rappaport became the first career academic to be named to the Wireless Hall of Fame, and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He has made a lasting impact, not only at New York University but on the world — a legacy further cemented through his elevation to IEEE Life Fellow and selection as an ACM Fellow.