Dr. Peha is the FCC’s Chief Technologist. Although based in OSP, he reports directly to the Chairman and works on issues that span the bureaus. He is also a Full Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of Engineering & Public Policy and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. In addition, he has served as Associate Director of the university's Center for Wireless and Broadband Networking.  

Dr. Peha was Chief Technical Officer of three high-tech start-ups and a member of technical staff at SRI International, AT&T Bell Laboratories, and Microsoft. He also addressed telecom and e-commerce issues while on legislative staff for the House Energy & Commerce Committee and in the Office of Senator Ron Wyden. He also went to USAID to help launch and lead a U.S. Government interagency program to assist developing countries with information infrastructure. Moreover, he consulted for numerous companies and government agencies.

His research spans technical and policy issues of communications networks, including spectrum management, broadband Internet, wireless networks, video and voice over IP, communications for emergency responders, universal service, secure Internet payment systems, dissemination of copyrighted material, e-commerce, network modeling and simulation, and network security. He has testified before Congress, the FCC, the FTC, the ITU, and state and local policy bodies.

Dr. Peha is a Congressional Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Diplomacy Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a member in the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE). He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford, and a B.Sc. from Brown. Additional information is available at his Carnegie Mellon home page and publications list.