Theodore S. Rappaport is the David Lee/Ernst Weber Professor at New York University (NYU). He founded the NYU WIRELESS research center and the wireless research centers at the University of Texas Austin (WNCG) and Virginia Tech (MPRG). His work has provided fundamental knowledge for wireless system design and radio channels used to create the IEEE 802.11 standard, the first U.S. digital TDMA and CDMA standards, the first public Wi-Fi hotspots, and more recently proved the viability of millimeter wave and sub-THz frequencies for 5G, 6G, and beyond. He founded two businesses that were sold to publicly traded companies — TSR Technologies, Inc. and Wireless Valley Communications, Inc. -- and was an advisor to Straight Path Communications which sold 5G millimeter wave spectrum to Verizon. He is a licensed Professional Engineer and is in the Wireless Hall of Fame, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a life member of the American Radio Relay League. His ham radio call sign is N9NB.

Rappaport pioneered the use of millimeter waves for mobile communications, and his work was adopted in the global 5G cellular standard, opening up spectrum once viewed as having little use for the mobile communications industry. He also led the world to consider frequencies above 100 GHz for wireless communications in emerging global standards. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) relied upon his findings when it opened up the world’s first cellular spectrum bands at millimeter wave frequencies in 2016, and Terahertz frequencies in 2019. He created the Power Waste Factor (W), a figure of merit for power efficiency in cascaded networks, and was involved with the creation of the Two-Wave with Diffuse Power (TWDP) probability distribution that has Rayleigh and Rician distributions as special cases. The TWDP distribution has found use in modern wireless communication systems.

2017: IEEE Neal Shepherd Memorial Best Propagation Paper Award
2013-2016: Distinguished Lecturer, IEEE Vehicular Technology Society
2008-2014: Member of Board of Directors of IEEE Vehicular Technology Society