Gil Zussman Inducted into the American Academy of Sciences and Letters
The networking expert was honored for his distinguished contribution to human learning.
Gil Zussman, Kenneth Brayer Professor of Electrical Engineering and chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia Engineering, has been named a member of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters (AASL).
The AASL is a non-partisan organization that recognizes outstanding achievement in the arts, sciences, and learned professions. At an investiture ceremony at Decatur House–an annex of the Library of Congress–in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, November 12, 2025, Zussman was among 60 new members inducted into the Academy.
New members inducted into the American Academy of Sciences and Letters (Courtesy of AASL)
Zussman, who joined Columbia in 2007, is also an affiliated professor of computer science and a member of the Data Science Institute. His research focuses on networking, specifically wireless, mobile, and resilient networks. He is the principal investigator (PI) at Columbia of the NSF COSMOS testbed, an $18 million national wireless testbed spanning West Harlem for experimentation in wireless and optical networks, edge cloud computing, and smart cities. The testbed has served as a foundation for the NSF Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3) Engineering Research Center (ERC) at Columbia.
Among his many honors, Zussman is an IEEE Fellow and received the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) Award for distinguished students, two Marie Curie International Fellowships, the Fulbright Fellowship, the DTRA Young Investigator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and is a co-recipient of eight best paper awards.
He received a BSc degree in industrial engineering and management and a BA degree in economics (both summa cum laude) from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 1995. He received the MSc degree (summa cum laude) in operations research from Tel-Aviv University in 1999 and a PhD degree in electrical engineering from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 2004. Between 1995 and 1998, he served as an engineer in the Israel Defense Forces. Between 2004 and 2007, he was a postdoctoral associate at MIT.
Lead Photo Caption: Gil Zussman (right) with Donald Landry, president of the AASL and interim president at University of Florida, pictured at the Nov. 12 investiture ceremony.
Lead Photo Credit: AASL
