Ed Knapp

Ed Knapp is American Tower’s Chief Technology Officer. He is responsible for leading the company’s global innovation program, technology investments and strategy for the wireless and data center platforms. Before joining American Tower in 2017, Ed served as Senior Vice President of Engineering at Qualcomm. There, he led a global team focused on pioneering 5G research and silicon products. He created the small cell silicon product division investing over $1B in R&D over multiple chip cycles. His journey with Qualcomm began after its acquisition of Flarion Technologies, an innovative start-up that made significant intellectual property and systems design contributions to today’s broadband cellular data networks.

Ed's extensive start-up and new venture experience also includes his role as Chief Technology Officer at PacketVideo Corporation, where he worked on applications software for MPEG-4 video streaming services over cellular networks. As a co-founder and CTO of NextWave Telecom, Inc., he played a pivotal role in shaping the company's business direction, capital raise and initial design of its US network. Additionally, Ed served as Executive Director of Technical Services for Bell Atlantic/NYNEX Mobile (Verizon Wireless), overseeing the operations and buildout of the merged New York area wireless network. His early engineering work was in naval radar and optical networks.

Mr. Knapp has a diverse set of technology and business interests. He serves on the Board of Directors of AST SpaceMobile a public NASDAQ corporation and is a Board Director for the non-profit Center for Automotive Research (CAR). His volunteer work centers on STEM, primarily as a member of the CEAS Dean’s Advisory Council at Stony Brook University as well as the Rutgers University Industry Advisory Board. Ed is an advisor to i4SD a social impact start-up targeting sustainable development in Africa. He is also a founding member of the Outthinker Strategy Network which is focused on innovation and the impact of AI transformation on corporate strategy. 

Ed holds five U.S. patents and regularly makes contributions to conferences, podcasts and industry publications. He earned an M.B.A. from Columbia University, a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Polytechnic University (NYU) in New York and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Stony Brook University.