February 10, 2024
IITKGPian Monisha Ghosh has a History of Contributing to Advances in Communication Systems
IITKGP Foundation
Monisha Ghosh is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame and a member of the Notre Dame Wireless Institute. She is also the Policy Outreach Director for SpectrumX, the first NSF Center for Spectrum Innovation, and the co-chair of the FCC's Technological Advisory Council (TAC) Working Group on Advanced Spectrum Sharing. Dr. Ghosh has dedicated her career to advancing the field of electrical engineering, making important contributions to the field through her research interest in communication systems.
Monisha received her Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1991, and B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1986. Monisha has over 50 scientific papers and 40 patents to her credit. Even beyond these patents, Dr. Ghosh has accomplished a great deal in her career. Her research in signal processing and wireless communications has pushed cutting-edge advancements in academia and industry. Notably, she contributed to IEEE 802.22, which is the first worldwide wireless standard based on cognitive radios. In recognition of her contributions to cognitive radio and signal processing for communication systems, IEEE named Dr. Ghosh a Fellow of the IEEE in 2015. The honor of becoming an IEEE fellow is reserved for a small fraction of IEEE members with extraordinary accomplishments in one of IEEE’s fields of interest, making this a highly respected distinction.
Monisha completed a term as the first women Chief Technology Officer at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2021. In this role she reported to the Chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, and was closely involved with setting national strategy and technology specifications related to the explosive growth of broadband wireless communications technologies. When appointing Monisha for this post, Mr. Pai stated: “Dr Ghosh has both conducted and overseen research into cutting-edge wireless issues in academia and industry. Her expertise is also broad, ranging from the internet of things, medical telemetry, and broadcast standards. And it bears noting that this is an historic appointment: I am proud that Dr Ghosh will be the FCC's first female CTO, and hope her example inspires young women everywhere to consider careers in STEM fields.” Prof. Ghosh previously served in the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a rotating Program Director (IPA) within the Directorate of Computer & Information Science and Engineering (CISE) where she managed wireless networking research. At the NSF, she initiated one of the first large-scale programs that targets applications of machine learning to wireless networks.
Prior to joining the University of Chicago, Monisha worked extensively in industrial research and development at Interdigital, Philips Research and Bell Laboratories, on various wireless systems such as the HDTV broadcast standard, cable standardization and cognitive radio for the TV White Spaces. She has made active technical contributions to many industry standards, including IEEE 802.22 and 802.11. While at Philips she was responsible for conceiving of and designing the first blind equalization architecture to be incorporated into an integrated circuit product chip (Philips, digital TDA 8960 VSB channel decoder IC for digital TV, 1999).