By all accounts,
Andrea J. Goldsmith Success. The pioneer of wireless communication Princetonis the Dean of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She has launched two successful startups. She has a long career in academia, is a science advisor to the President of the United States, and serves on the boards of several major companies. So it was surprising to learn that she almost dropped out of her first year of her college engineering program. University of California, Berkeley.
“By the end of my first year, I really thought I didn’t belong in engineering because I wasn’t good at it and no one thought I should be there,” the IEEE fellow admitted. “Over the summer, I dusted myself off, reduced my hours at my job from full-time to part-time, and decided I wouldn’t leave it to anyone but myself to decide whether I should become an engineer or not.”
She kept that promise, earning a bachelor's degree in engineering mathematics and then a master's and doctorate in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley. She taught engineering at Stanford for over 20 years. As the basis for her two startups, she developed a fundamental mathematical approach to increase the capacity, speed, and range of wireless systems, for which she received monetary compensation and several recognitions, including: Marconi AwardIEEE Award in Communications Technology; National Inventors Hall of Fame.
But for all the honors Goldsmith has received, it is what she cherishes most:IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. education medal. She received this year's Mulligan Award “for her work educating, mentoring, and inspiring generations of students, and for writing a pioneering textbook in the field of advanced digital communications.” This award is sponsored by: MathWorks, pearson educationandIEEE Life Membership Fund.
“As a professor, my greatest joy is the young people I work with, especially graduate students and postdocs. I credit all my success as an academic to them,” she says. “They are people with the passion, determination, resilience and creativity to bring ideas and collaborate with me in creating my entire research portfolio.
“Mentoring young people means mentoring them all, not just the professional side,” she says. “I am thrilled to receive recognition for the work I have done to inspire, mentor and educate generations of students.”
The importance of mentors
Goldsmith, who grew up in Los Angeles, was interested in European politics and history, as well as culture and language. During her senior year of high school, she decided to drop out to travel around Europe, where she earned her high school equivalency degree.
She excelled at math and science in high school, so her father, a mechanical engineering professor at UC Berkeley, suggested she consider majoring in engineering. Upon her return to the United States, she took her father's advice and enrolled in UC Berkeley's engineering program. Because she didn't have all the prerequisites, she had to take some basic math and physics courses. She also took language and philosophy classes.
While a full-time student, Goldsmith helped pay for college on her own by working as a waitress. She says: “She was paying the price.”
Her grades suffered from the stress of juggling school and work. Additionally, because she was one of the few female students in the program, she encountered a lot of implicit and explicit bias from her professors and classmates, she said. Her sense of belonging was also damaged because the engineering school had no female faculty and few female teaching assistants.
“I don’t believe that the engineering profession can reach its full potential and that we can solve the serious problems facing society through technology without a diverse group of people who can contribute to those solutions.”
“There was an attitude that if women didn’t do well, they should choose a different major. On the other hand, if the men didn’t do well, it was okay,” she says. “It’s a social message that if you don’t see women or diverse people on a show, you think, ‘Maybe it’s not for me, maybe I don’t belong here.’ This is reinforced by the implicit biases of her faculty and her peers.”
This and her poor grades led her to consider dropping out of her engineering major. However, things began to turn around in the second year. She focused on basic courses, learned better study habits, and shortened her working hours at her job.
“I realized that what I wanted to do was major in engineering. It was a big revelation,” she says. Additionally, she admitted that her political science classes became boring compared to her engineering classes. She decided that anything you can do with a political science degree can be done with an engineering degree, but not vice versa, so she stuck with engineering.
She credits two mentors for encouraging her to continue participating in the program. The one is Elizabeth J. Strauss, Goldsmith's linear algebra teaching assistant and the first woman he met at the school who was pursuing a STEM career. She became Goldsmith's role model and friend. Strouse is currently a professor of mathematics at the university. Mathematics Research Institute from the University of Bordeaux, France.
the other was her undergraduate advisor; Aram J. Thomasian. Professors of statistics and electrical engineering advised Goldsmith to apply his mathematical knowledge to communications or information theory.
“Thomasian was an inspiration to me and really nailed down some really exciting real-world applications,” she says. “This shows what a difference early mentors can make in steering young people in the right direction.”
After graduating in 1986 with a bachelor's degree in engineering mathematics, Goldsmith worked in industry for several years before returning to obtain a graduate degree. She began her long academic career as an assistant professor in the School of Engineering in 1994. caltech. She joined Stanford's Department of Electrical Engineering in 1999 and left for Princeton in 2020.
![A group of people smiling at the camera against a black background; The woman in the middle is wearing a medal around her neck](https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-group-of-people-smiling-for-the-camera-against-a-black-background-woman-in-middle-is-wearing-a-medal-around-her-neck.jpg?id=52295705&width=980)
Andrea Goldsmith honors IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. at this year's IEEE Honors Awards Ceremony. We proudly display our education medals. She will be accompanied by IEEE President-elect Kathleen Kramer and IEEE President Tom Couglin.
Rob Cohen
Commercialization of adaptive wireless communication
While at Stanford, Goldsmith conducted groundbreaking research in wireless communications. She is credited with discovering adaptive modulation techniques that allow network designers to match data transmission rates to those that the wireless channel can support while network conditions and channel quality fluctuate. Her technology has reduced network outages, laid the foundation for Internet of Things applications, and enabled faster Wi-Fi speeds. She has been awarded 38 U.S. patents for her own work.
To commercialize her research, she helped discover: Quantenna Communications, served as CTO in San Jose, California in 2005. The startup's technology allowed video to be distributed to homes over Wi-Fi at data rates of 600 megabits per second. The company was listed in 2016. Acquisition by ON Semiconductor In 2019.
In 2010, she helped found another telecommunications company.
feather design, served as CTO in Palo Alto, California. Plume was the first to develop Adaptive Wi-Fi, technology that uses machine learning to understand how your home's bandwidth needs change throughout the day and adjust to meet them.
With Quantenna and Plume, she could have left Stanford to become a long-term CTO, but decided against it. Because, she said, “I love the university’s research mission to advance the frontiers of knowledge and the university’s broad service mission to make the world a better place.”
“My heart is very much in college. I can’t imagine leaving academia.”
The Importance of Diversity in Engineering
Goldsmith has been an active IEEE volunteer for many years. Some of her most important achievements include:
IEEE Board of Directors Diversity and Inclusion CommitteeShe is sitting on a chair.
“We've put in place a lot of programs and initiatives that are important to a lot of people and have literally changed the face of IEEE,” she says.
Although several organizations and universities have recently dismantled diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, DEI is important, she says.
“As a society, we must ensure that everyone can reach their full potential,” she says. “Professions such as engineering, law, medicine, and government require diverse ideas, perspectives, and experiences to be successful.
“My work to enhance diversity and inclusion in the engineering profession has truly been about excellence,” she says. “I do not believe that engineering as a profession can reach its full potential or solve problems.
evil challenge “If we don’t have a diverse group of people who can contribute to those solutions, we’re going to have to face society through technology.”
She points out that, as a woman, she entered the engineering field with different perspectives gained from traveling around Europe as a student.
“If you have a very narrow definition of what excellence is or what advantage is, you’re going to exclude a lot of very capable, strong people who can bring different ideas, original thinking, and different dimensions of excellence. It fits the role,” she says. “And it harms our most important goals.
“Looking back to my first year of college when DEI didn’t exist, I almost dropped out of the program,” she adds. “It would have been really sad for me, and professionally, if I hadn’t majored in engineering.”
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