Prathima Agrawal is the Samuel Ginn Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Director of Auburn University's Wireless Engineering Research and Education Center (WEREC) since December 2003. She is also the Auburn site Director of Wireless Internet Center for Advanced Technology (WICAT) since August 2007. WICAT is a National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored Industry University Collaborative Research Center (I/UCRC). The WICAT consortium consists of four universities including the Polytechnic University of New York, Auburn University, University of Virginia and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Dr. Agrawal spent more than 25 years working in various capacities in the Bell System (Bell Telephone Laboratories, AT&T Bell Laboratories, AT&T Laboratories, Bellcore and Telcordia Technologies). She arrived at Auburn after working five years at Telcordia Technologies (formerly Bellcore), Morristown, New Jersey, where she was the Executive Director of the Mobile Networking Research Department and Assistant Vice President of the Network Systems Laboratory. Prior to joining Telcordia, she worked for about 20 years at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where she made original contributions in the areas of VLSI architecture, computer-aided design tools for integrated circuit design, and networking. In 1992, she created the Networked Computing Research Department at Murray Hill and was named its head. While at Bell Laboratories and Telcordia, Dr. Agrawal was an Adjunct Professor of ECE at Rutgers University's WINLab during the years 1998 through 2003.

Dr. Agrawal has published extensively in the areas of Networks and VLSI. She holds 50 US patents. She received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, 2006; the Telcordia CEO Award, 2000; and the Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff Award of AT&T Bell Laboratories, 1985. She is the recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Distinguished Service Award, 1990, and the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, 2000.  She is a Fellow of IEEE (1989), Institution of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineers, India (IETE) and a Member of the ACM.

She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering in the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California. She is also a member of the Technology Leaders Program Advisory Board at the University of Virginia.

Dr. Agrawal received BE and ME degrees in Electrical Communication Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, and the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering - Systems,  from the University of Southern California.