He was born on February 7, 1957 in the Giza, Egypt. At the age of 22, he received a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Cairo University. He served in the Egyptian Armed Forces during 1980. That year he completed the third year and the mid-term for the fourth year of an applied mathematics degree in Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. He worked for Schlumberger Wireline Services as an oil well logging engineer from 1981 to 1983. He was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Calgary from 1984 to-1989.

He obtained his M.Sc. in physics from the University of Calgary in 1985. He was a Statistics instructor at the University of Athabasca from 1988 to 1990. He was a senior researcher at Telus from 1989 to 1993. He obtained a Ph. D. in Physics from the University of Calgary in 1994. He held various positions in Wi-LAN Inc. from 1993 to 2008. He was the CEO of Cell-Loc Inc. from 1995 to 1997. Dr. Zaghloul was on the board of directors of many hi-tech companies.

He was the CEO of Solutrea from 2006 till 2008. Ph.D., M.Sc., B.E.E. is best known for his inventions, together with his long-time friend, Dr. Michel Fattouche of Wideband Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (WOFDM),and Multi-code Direct-sequence Spread Spectrum (MCDSSS).[3] WOFDM is the foundation for the IEEE 802.11a/g/n technologies whereas MCas in the CDMA2000 standard.