Ashutosh Dutta is currently a senior scientist and 5G chief strategist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory; he is also a JHU APL sabbatical fellow and adjunct faculty at the Johns Hopkins University. Dutta currently serves as the director of the Whiting School of Engineering’s Doctor of Engineering program, prior to which he was the Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering for JHU’s Engineering for Professionals program.
His career, spanning more than 30 years, includes roles as director of technology security and lead member of technical staff at AT&T; chief technical officer of wireless for NIKSUN; senior scientist and project manager in Telcordia Applied Research; director of Columbia University’s central research facilities; adjunct faculty at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT); and computer engineer at Tata Motors Limited. Dutta has more than 120 conference and journal publications and standards specifications, three book chapters, and 31 issued patents. He is also co-author Mobility Protocols and Handover Optimization: Design, Evaluation and Application, published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
As a technical leader in 5G and security, Dutta served as the founding co-chair for the IEEE Future Networks initiative, which focuses on 5G standardization, education, publication, testbed, and roadmapping activities. He also served as the founding co-chair for the IEEE Connecting the Unconnected Challenge and the IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed, and as chair of the IEEE Open RAN and 6G Industry Connections. He currently serves as the chief information officer for the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) and was a member-at-large on its board of governors from 2020 to 2025.
Dutta was also chair for the IEEE Princeton Central Jersey Section (PCJS), IEEE Region 1’s Industry Relations Chair, the pre-university coordinator for IEEE Member & Geographic Activities, and vice chair of the IEEE PCJS Education Society. He additionally co-founded the IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference, serving as its general co-chair for the last 13 years and helping to implement Engineering Projects in Community Service projects in several high schools. He served as the director of industry outreach for IEEE ComSoc from 2014 to 2019, was an IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer from 2017 to 2020, and was an ACM Distinguished Speaker from 2020 to 2022. He has additionally served as the general co-chair for the premier IEEE 5G World Forum and has organized 95 5G world summits around the globe.
An IEEE Fellow, Distinguished Member of the ACM, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Fellow, and member of National Academy of Artificial Intelligence, Dutta is the recipient of the prestigious 2009 IEEE MGA Leadership Award, both IEEE-USA’s 2010 Professional Leadership Award and 2022 George F. McClure Citation of Honor, and a 2022 IEEE North American Region Exceptional Service Award. He was also inducted into the New Internet Protocol version 6 Hall of Fame and received the Distinguished Odia Award from the Odisha Society of the Americas in 2025.
Dutta is a distinguished alumnus of the National Institute of Technology Rourkela, where he received a a BS in electrical engineering. He received an MS in computer science from NJIT and a PhD in electrical engineering from Columbia University under the supervision of Henning Schulzrinne.
