Spectrum Working Group Chair
Andrew Thiessen is the Head of 5G/xG at the MITRE Corporation, which is a non-profit that works in the public interest across Federal, state, and local governments, as well as industry and academia. Andrew is the MITRE representative to the NextG Alliance Steering Group and the Chair of the NextG Alliance Spectrum Working Group.
Before joining MITRE, Andrew Thiessen was the Division Chief for the Telecommunications and Information Planning Division of the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences, where he led the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s efforts on 5G standards and R&D.
Before becoming a Division Chief at ITS, Andrew led the Systems Research and Architecture Development Team within the Division, where he was responsible for all standards are requirements development in such organizations as 3GPP, ATIS, and GSMA. Andrew led the standards team responsible for the creation of standards for public safety’s use of Long Term Evolution (LTE) to include features vital for mission critical communications such as direct mode, group communications, and mission critical push to talk. Additionally, Andrew has served as the Vice-Chair of the Technology and Broadband Committee within the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC). Andrew has also served as the Laboratory Program Manager of the Project 25 Compliance Assessment Program and the Deputy Program Manager of the Public Safety Communications Research Program.
Prior to beginning work at ITS, Andrew was the principal engineer at a startup (Integral Focus) focused on developing cloud based medical office management software. Prior to working at Integral Focus, Andrew was a senior systems engineer for Sun Microsystems and MITRE, along with several successful starts ups including MessageMedia (purchased by DoubleClick), where he managed the integration of an acquisition into the business and then managed the system architecture upon the successful integration. Andrew started his career with the National Security Agency out of undergraduate school, working on varied project areas.
Andrew did his undergraduate academic work at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in both Electrical Engineering and English. He received his Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and his Master’s in Business Administration from Duke University. Andrew is the recipient of Department of Commerce Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals for his work in public safety communications. He is also the recipient of the DJ Atkinson Technical Award from NPSTC.
