Stephan Schell
B.S., '86. M.S., '87. Ph.D., '90
Stephan Schell was a pivotal member of the Apple team that created the first iPhone in 2007. In his 10 years at Apple, he drove wireless technology plans for cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and near-field communication protocols many years ahead of product launches, and helped build the architectures of the Apple Pay system, the eSIM feature that freed the iPhone from SIM cards and the AirPods product line. He retired as a senior director of wireless systems architecture and DEST in 2015. Over his nearly 35-year career, Schell achieved 90 patents as a co-inventor or, sometimes, as a sole inventor. He is also proud of his time as a tenure-track electrical engineering professor at Pennsylvania State University, where he advised three Ph.D. students and five M.S. students in the early '90s.