Andrea Goldsmith

Andrea Goldsmith (born July 4, 1964) is an American electrical engineer and academic administrator. She has served as the seventh president of Stony Brook University since August 2025.

Goldsmith was previously dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. Before Princeton, she was the Stephen Harris Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, as well as a faculty affiliate at the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. Her interests are in the design, analysis and fundamental performance limits of wireless systems and networks, and in the application of communication theory and signal processing to neuroscience. She also co-founded and served as chief technology officer of Plume Wi-Fi and Quantenna Communications. Since 2021, she has been a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Early life and education Goldsmith was raised in the San Fernando Valley, California. Her father Werner Goldsmith was a professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, and her mother Adrienne Goldsmith was an animator for cartoon shows, including The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Goldsmith earned her bachelor's degree in engineering math from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986, and her MS and PhD in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley in 1991 and 1994, respectively. She has authored and co-authored several books, including Wireless Communication, MIMO Wireless Communications and Principles of Cognitive Radio. and she is a principal investigator in the National Science Foundation Center on the Science of Information.

In the IEEE, Goldsmith served on the board of governors for both the Information Theory and Communications societies. She has also been a distinguished lecturer for both societies, served as president of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 2009, founded and chaired the Student Committee of the IEEE Information Theory Society, and chaired the Emerging Technology Committee of the IEEE Communications Society. She chairs the IEEE Committee on Diversity and Inclusion.

She won the 2017 Women in Communications Engineering Mentorship Award from the IEEE Communications Society for her efforts in encouraging women in the fields of technology and engineering.

She was also invested Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Málaga (Spain) in 2024 .

In August of 2025, Goldsmith was appointed to become the seventh president of Stony Brook University.

Awards IEEE fellow for contributions to the development of adaptive techniques and the analysis of fundamental capacity limits for wireless communication systems in the year 2005. National Academy of Engineering Gilbreth Lecture Award, 2002 Silicon Valley Business Journal Women of Influence Award, 2010 IEEE Communications Society Edwin H. Armstrong Achievement Award, 2014 Member, National Academy of Engineering, 2017–present Marconi Prize, 2020 IEEE Claude E. Shannon Award, 2027

Publications Books and book chapters Entropy, Mutual Information, and Capacity for Markov Channels with General Inputs, T. Holliday, A. Goldsmith, P. Glynn, Stanford University Press, 2002 EE359 Wireless Communications, A. Goldsmith, Stanford University Press, 2002 Wireless Communications, A. Goldsmith, Cambridge University Press, 2005 MIMO Wireless Communications, E. Biglieri, Cambridge University Press, 2007 Principles of Cognitive Radio, A. Goldsmith, L. Greenstein, N. Mandayam, H.V. Poor, Cambridge University Press, 2012

Personal life Goldsmith lives in Old Field, New York, with her husband, scientist Arturo Salz.