President Andrea Goldsmith
Andrea Goldsmith is the seventh president of Stony Brook University, SUNY’s research flagship and the No. 1 public university in New York State.
Appointed in August 2025, Goldsmith also oversees Stony Brook Medicine, Long Island’s premier academic healthcare system; co-chairs Brookhaven Science Associates, which manages Brookhaven National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy; and chairs the board of the New York Climate Exchange, a historic partnership anchored by Stony Brook University to build an international climate solutions center on Governors Island.
With more than three decades of experience in university leadership, teaching and research, Goldsmith has consistently driven transformational impact and excellence. She served as dean of engineering and applied science at Princeton for five years and spent 21 years on Stanford’s engineering faculty. Her research in wireless communications translated into new technologies and two successful start-up companies where she served as chief technology officer: Plume Wi-Fi and Quantenna Communications. Today, she lends her expertise as a board member of Intel (INTC), Medtronic (MDT) and Crown Castle Inc. (CCI).
A champion of access, opportunity and upward mobility, President Goldsmith attributes
her entire public-school journey — from K–12 and community college through graduate
studies — as the foundation of her professional success. She earned her bachelor’s,
master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of California, Berkeley.
Mission-Focused Transformational Leadership
Driven by her commitment to the success of students, faculty and staff and her leadership
style that brings people together to advance a shared vision, President Goldsmith
transformed Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Science during her tenure
as its dean. Key accomplishments included significant expansion of disciplinary and
interdisciplinary faculty and graduate students in the school while increasing its
sponsored research by 25 percent. She was instrumental in founding the Omenn-Darling
Bioengineering Institute and launching cross-cutting research initiatives in robotics,
blockchain, wireless technologies and AI. Under her leadership, corporate partnerships, innovation and entrepreneurship thrived.
At Stanford, she chaired the Faculty Senate, served multiple terms as a senator, and
served on its Academic Council Advisory Board; Budget Group; Committee on Research;
Planning and Policy Board; Commissions on Graduate and on Undergraduate Education;
and Task Force on Women and Leadership.
In 2021, she was appointed by the White House to President Biden’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology to advise the president on matters related to science, technology innovation, sustainability and public policy.
As founding chair of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Board of Directors Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, President Goldsmith set
a new standard for inclusivity. She led the IEEE Information Theory Society as president,
served as founding chair of its student committee and launched the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory as its founding editor-in-chief. She has also served on the boards of governors for
the IEEE Information Theory Society and the IEEE Communications Society.
Pioneering Wireless Technology Research and Innovation
President Goldsmith’s research interests are in information, communication and control
theories and signal processing and their application to wireless communications, interconnected
systems and neuroscience.
An inventor who holds 38 patents — all in wireless technology — she has received numerous
honors and awards for her work, including induction into the Wireless History Foundation’s
Wireless Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame®, and the IEEE Dresselhaus Medal, which recognizes outstanding technical contributions
to and leadership in wireless communications theory and practice. In 2020, President
Goldsmith received The Marconi Prize — the highest honor in telecommunications research
— as the first woman to receive this recognition. She is a member of the National
Academy of Engineering, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Swedish Academy
of Engineering Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Excellence in Education, Mentorship and Service
President Goldsmith is first and foremost an educator, with a successful track record
of educating and mentoring generations of engineers and entrepreneurs. She has authored
what is considered the foundational textbook used in wireless communications classes,
Wireless Communications (Cambridge University Press), which has been translated into three languages. She
is the co-author of the books MIMO Wireless Communications,Principles of Cognitive Radio, and Machine Learning and Wireless Communications, all published by Cambridge University Press.
Goldsmith has taught and mentored students ranging from freshmen to advanced graduate students. Beyond the classroom, she engages deeply with her students to help them develop into successful engineers and leaders. Her commitment to mentoring pays forward the outstanding mentoring she received from her own professors and professional colleagues. She has supervised 26 PhD students, 22 post-doctoral researchers and a large number of undergraduate and graduate research projects. In 2024, she was honored with the IEEE James H. Mulligan Jr. Education Medal in recognition of educating, mentoring and inspiring generations of students and for authoring pioneering textbooks in advanced digital communications. She is also the recipient of the IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award, the IEEE Women in Communications Engineering Mentorship Award and the inaugural Stanford Postdoc Mentoring Award.
As the university’s seventh president, Goldsmith is focused on achieving Stony Brook’s bold aspirations and meeting the needs of the communities it serves by accelerating its excellence across all dimensions of education, clinical care, research and innovation.