Professor Mona E. Zaghloul, earned her PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 1975. She was the first woman to graduate with a PhD in Engineering from U of Waterloo. She was the first woman to be appointed as a faculty member at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, The George Washington University in 1980, first woman to be promoted to Full Professor in 1989, and first woman Department Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1994-1998. She became the Chair again in 2009-2014, of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. During her tenure at GWU, Dr. Mona Zaghloul served as a Program Director in the Division of Electrical Communication and Cyberspace Systems of the National Science Foundation (NSF- 2014-2016), and as a Faculty Hire and Sabbatical Researcher at National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST), and sabbatical at the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) in the US, and at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands.
Her publications (over 300 papers), patents, teaching, and research, as well as her professional service at the IEEE, have helped to create the scientific foundation for Sensors, MEMS/NEMS systems that led to the establishment of the Institute for MEMS and VLSI Technologies at GWU. She published widely in those areas and other areas and became a Life Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and the IEEE Circuits and Systems Jubilee Golden Medal awardee in recognition of her pioneering work. She was the IEEE Sensors Council President (2009-2010) and received Honorary Doctor Degree from University Waterloo, Canada in 2007.