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Dr. Shlomo Engelberg
Lecturer in Engineering
Department of Electronics Engineering
Yom
Kippur, 1994. Shlomo Engelberg spent the day in the
synagogue, immersed in heshbon nefesh, the spiritual
accounting required of every Jew on the holiest day of the
year. But immediately after the fast, he rushed off to to a
different kind of heshbon altogether: defending his
doctoral thesis before a panel of mathematics professors at
NYU.
Engelberg succeeded, and within days
he left for Israel. "I
was just beginning a fellowship at Tel Aviv University, but
in fact my post-doc advisor has already collaborated with my
professors at NYU, and was actually the one who posed the
mathematical problem I solved at my dissertation," recalls Engelberg, now a faculty member in JCT's Department
of Electronics Engineering.
But mathematics is not the only world in which Engelberg feels at home. From an early age he was immersed in the
world of computers, spending his spare time at Queensborough
Community College, where his father taught physics. I was
given free reign in the computer room," he recalls.
Before long he became a proficient programmer and the
college offered him a job. "I was programming on a PDP-11, a cabinet sized computer that was considered pretty fancy at
the time. I got my first paycheck at the age of 15 for
creating software that let students take tests on the
computer."
He received
a B.S. in
1988 and a Masters in 1990, from Cooper Union both in Electrical Engineering.
At the same time, he found himself attracted to the world of
pure theory. While still studying at Cooper Union, her
traveled across town to pursue a Masters in Mathematics at
NYU.
Engelberg remained at NYU, received a Ph.D under the
supervision of mathematicians Jonathan Goodman and Peter
Lax, the latter a recipient of the National Medal of Science
who chaired the National Science Board from 1980 to 1986.
His doctoral thesis focused on the mathematical
characteristics of shock waves, a field of
research that Lax spearheaded
since he was stationed by the US Army in Los Alamos in 1945.
AT NYU, Engelberg taught
calculus and discreet mathematics to undergraduates and
continued to see teaching mathematics as his career goal.
However, as he reached the end of his second year as a
post-doc, in 1996 he left Tel Aviv University for the
Technion in Haifa. Engelberg felt the pendulum swinging back
towards engineering.
In 1997, his father's cousin
Professor Abba Engelberg, Machon Lev's Rector
thought the Electronic Engineering Department at JCT
could use someone with Shlomo's background and introduced
him to Prof. Aryeh Weiss, then chairman of the Electronics
Department. The match was made.
"At Machon Lev, I teach microprocessors, random signals
and noise, communication, a communications laboratory
class while continuing my own research in shockwaves, signal
processing and control theory. But the thing I like best is
supervising individual students." Far from being sterile
academic exercises, he says , "these projects provide a
framework for useful research on problems of real, practical
interest," adding that he co-authored three articles in
professional journals with his project students.
Other outstanding faculty profiles:
Professor Yehuda Badichi
Dr. Ivy Kidron
Dr. Tirza Hirst |
