Joel S. Engel

Joel Stanley Engel (born February 4, 1936 in New York City ) is an American engineer and pioneer of wireless technology.

Engel received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the City College of New York in 1957 and his master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959 . He then worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories (in digital data transmission over analog telephone lines) and received his doctorate in 1964 from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn . He was then assigned to Bellcomm, which developed guidance systems for spacecraft in the Apollo program (he had already worked on this at MIT). In 1967 he was back at Bell Labs working on early cellular. His group developed the architecture and specification of the US standard Advanced Mobile Phone Service . From 1973 to 1975 he was in the planning department of the parent company of Bell Labs, ATT, and after his return to Bell Labs he had tasks in technical management there. In 1983 he became Vice President of Technology at Satellite Business Systems and, after its merger with MCI, Vice President of Research and Development at MCI Communications in 1986 . In 1987 he joined Ameritech as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer , which he remained until 1997. He is President of JSE Consulting in Armonk, New York .

In 2013, he and other mobile communications pioneers such as Richard H. Frenkiel received the Charles Stark Draper Prize . In 1980 he became an IEEE Fellow and in 1987 he received the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal with Frenkiel and William C. Jakes . In 1994 he received the National Medal of Technology and in 1996 he became a member of the National Academy of Engineering .

Web links

• Biography at the IEEE