NYU WIRELESS was honored to welcome Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs as he visited the NYU-Tandon campus last Monday, November 18.  NYU WIRELESS Director Ted Rappaport led Jacobs on a tour of NYU WIRELESS’ state of the art facility which includes 13,000 square feet of research space for labs, offices and student work areas.  “There is no bigger name in wireless today than Paul Jacobs and we are thrilled that he was able to see first-hand the important work being done by our program,” said Rappaport.

Following the tour, Jacobs met with Rappaport, NYU-Tandon President Katepali Sreenivasan and 20 NYU WIRELESS students over lunch and described his path into the wireless industry.  After graduating from the University of California-Berkeley in 1989 with B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. Degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Jacobs spent a year as a post-doctoral researcher at a French government lab.  Following his post-doc, he joined Qualcomm in 1990, a company which his father, Irwin Jacobs founded in 1985.  The younger Jacobs rose from his initial position as a development engineer to become CEO in 2005 and chairman in 2009.

Jacobs spoke with passion about his love for the wireless industry and how the work Qualcomm is doing influences people’s daily lives.  According to Jacobs, Qualcomm is an immensely transparent company and he speaks on a daily basis with both senior management and entry-level engineers.  He fielded numerous questions from NYU WIRELESS students who aspire to work for companies such as Qualcomm and gave his viewpoint on the future of wireless, emphasizing the possibilities that exist between wireless and healthcare.

President Sreenivasan closed the visit by presenting Jacobs with a copy of Polytechnic University: Changing the World, The First 150 Years, a history of NYU-Tandon.