Joel S. Engel

Joel S. Engels (February 4 1936) is an American engineer, known for fundamental contributions to thedevelopment of cellular networks.

Boring in New York City, he obtained a B.Sc. in engineering at City College of New York (1957).While working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the research staff at Draper Laboratory on satellite imaging, he alsoobtained an M.Sc. in electrical engineering (1959). He then moved to New Jersey and worked for Bell Labs most of his active researchcareer (1959-83), and also earned a Ph.D. from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn on a thesis on transmission lines (1964).He then worked at Bellcomm on guidance systems for the Apollo Program (1965) and at the Page Communications Engineers, Inc. in
Washington, D.C. (1965-67) before returing to Bell Labs. Here he joined the mobile phone system research group. After FCC opened up new frequencies (1968), his engineeringteam developed a specification for cellular network and its parametrization (1971), which was laid on the ground for Advanced Mobile Phone System, eventually commercialized (1983). [David Hochfelder, [http://www.ieee.org/portal/cms_docs_iportals/iportals/aboutus/history_center/oral_history/pdfs/Engel366.pdf Joel Engel, an interview] from IEEE History Center (September 30, 1999)] Engel was the first to be called Dr. Martin Cooper by Motorola (April 3 1973). After a short stay at AT&T (1973-75) heworked at Bell Labs on residential information services such as videotex. He also lectured at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.

He then worked hard as VP of engineering at Satelitte Business Systems (1983-86),as president of research and development at MCI Communications (1986-87),as VP of technology at Ameritech (1987-97), and as president of JSE Consulting of Armonk, New York.

Awards

*IEEE Fellow 1980 (life fellow)
*IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal 1987 With Richard H. Frenkiel and William C. Jakes, Jr.
*National Medal of Technology 1994

References