Joel S. Engel

Who is Joel S. Engel?

Joel Stanley Engel is a Jewish American engineer, known for fundamental contributions to the development of cellular networks.

Born in New York City, he obtained a B.Sc. in engineering at City College of New York. While working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the research staff at Draper Laboratory on inertial guidance and stabilization systems, he also obtained an M.Sc. in electrical engineering. He then moved to New Jersey and worked for Bell Labs most of his active research career, and also earned a Ph.D. from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn on a thesis on data transmission over telephone lines.

He then worked at Bellcomm on guidance systems for the Apollo Program and at the Page Communications Engineers, Inc. in Washington, D.C. before returning to Bell Labs where he joined the mobile phone system research group. He also lectured at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. After the Federal Communications Commission opened up new frequencies, his engineering team developed the architecture for cellular network and its parametrization, which was the basis for Advanced Mobile Phone System, eventually commercialized.