El Gamal named chair of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Professor Hesham El Gamal has been appointed the new chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, effective September 1, 2018. He will succeed Professor Joel Johnson, who has served as chair since 2014.
“Hesham is an innovative and entrepreneurial faculty member who understands and values the increased role of industrial partnerships in both education and research,” said Dean David B. Williams. “His vision for electrical and computer engineering is appropriately creative and novel, and will build on the legacy of Joel Johnson, who has propelled the department to new heights.”
A highly regarded scholar and inventor, El Gamal’s research focuses on information theory, coding theory, wireless communication, game theory and machine learning. He holds 15 U.S. patents.
El Gamal received BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering from Cairo University, and a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park. Before joining the Ohio State ECE faculty in 2001, he was a senior member of the technical staff of Hughes Network Systems’ Advanced Development Group. He also served as the founding director for the Wireless Intelligent Networks Center and an acting vice president of research at Nile University, Cairo, Egypt.
His numerous recognitions and honors include Ohio State’s Innovator of the Year Award in 2013 and the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award in 2004. He was also named a Highly Cited Researcher for four consecutive years (2014-2017) by Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters). El Gamal is a Fellow of IEEE.
