Speakers

Dr. Tariq Durrani - Tariq Durrani is Research Professor in Electronic & Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. He was Deputy Principal (2000-06), with major responsibilities for University strategic developments in Computing/Information Technology infrastructure, Entrepreneurship, Staff Development and Lifelong Learning. He joined Strathclyde as a lecturer in 1976, Professor in 1982; Department Head (1990-94) of one of the largest UK EE Departments. His research interests are in Communications, Signal Processing and Technology and Higher Education Management, with some 350 publications. He has supervised some 40 PhDs, and held visiting/external appointments at Princeton, University of Southern California, Hong Kong and Sharjah (UAE). He has been a Director of UK Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (2003-09) set up to develop academic talent to take up leadership and management roles at the highest levels in UK universities; the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, and the UK Equality Challenge Unit for universities. He has been a (Board) Member Scottish Funding Council, which distributes $3.0 Billion funding annually to all Scotland universities and colleges. He is Vice Chair for the Science Committee of the UNESCO UK National Commission. He is the 2011 IEEE Vice President for Educational Activities.

Dr Konstantinos Karachalios - has been active in the field of external relations for the Europe Patent Office since 1999. He established and led EPO's International Academy as well as EPO's Department for Technical Assistance to Middle East and Africa. Since 2004 wider Systemic Engagement on behalf of the European Patent Office. As scenarios analyst and co-editor of the book "Scenarios for the Future: How might IP regimes evolve by 2025 ? What global legitimacy might such regimes have ?" he contributed decisively to identifying and including the big challenges that may impact the future of the global knowledge economy in EPO's horizon. He followed up by initiating and coordinating strategic responses to these challenges. This concerns governance issues, accessibility (to climate change technologies, essential drugs, food security, ICT standards etc) and transparency problems as well as ethical and political challenges related with the emergence of new technologies (biotechnology, genetics, nanotechnology).

Dr. Akram Alomainy - Akram Alomainy received the M.Eng. degree in communication engineering and Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Queen Mary University of London, London, U.K., in 2003 and 2007, respectively. He is a Lecturer with the Antennas and Electromagnetics Research Group, Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL). He has recently won the won the Isambard Kingdom Brunel award for his outreach activities as part of the British Science Festival, Bradford, UK, September 2011. He has authored or co-authored three book chapters and over 75 technical papers in leading journals and peer-reviewed conferences. He served as a publication chair and member of the organizing committee for various antennas and propagation related conferences and workshops, including iWAT 2007, LAPC 2008 and Metamaterials 2009. He is a reviewer for many leading transactions and journals in antennas, radio propagation and communication systems. Dr. Alomainy is a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, and an expert Reviewer for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research (EPSRC), U.K.”

Dr. Marko Delimar - is an electrical engineer, educator and researcher. He holds BSc, MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and a Diploma in Management. At present, Marko teaches at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, where he has been with the Department of Power Systems since 1997 and is exceptionally proud to have participated in the education of several thousand students. Marko has authored over 50 journal and conference papers and received several awards as a researcher, educator and volunteer. He is involved with several research projects, as well as industry and government contracted projects, including the development of National Energy Strategy. His professional interests include electric power and energy systems, simulation and modelling, intelligent systems and engineering education. Marko is an IEEE volunteer since 1994, currently serving as the Director of IEEE Region 8 (Europe, Africa, Middle East) and member of the IEEE Board of Directors. He is a big fan and supporter of IEEE Student Activities and has served as IEEE Region 8 Vice-chair of Student activities in 2005-2006.

Ms. Salima Kaissi - Salima got her engineering diploma in Communications from National School of Applied Sicences, Tangier, Morocco in 2007 and had high skills in computer science. She worked in Alcatel Lucent, Morocco, as software engineer before she moved to France. She was employed at Europ Assitance in 2008 as software engineer. Since Junuary 2009, she has been employed by Europcar, the European leader in passenger car and light utility vehicle rentals, as applications officer. In parallel to her Work with Europcar, she is doing a part time executive master in Strategy and Management of International Business, 10th in the 2010 Financial Times raking for the Executive Education category, at ESSEC (Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales) Business School - Paris, France. Salima started volunteering within several associations, she founded the first IEEE Student Branch in Morocco at the National of Applied Sciences in 2005 and joined the IEEE Morocco Section as Student Branches Coordinator from 2005 to 2007. She is GOLD Chair at France Section Since 2008 and member of the IEEE Region 8 GOLD committee.

Dr. Sean Mcloone - Dr. McLoone is a Chartered Engineer, a Senior Member of the IEEE and Past Chairman of the UK and Republic of Ireland (UKRI) Section of the IEEE. He is also a Member of the Accreditation Board of Engineers Ireland, Treasurer of the Irish Systems and Control Committee (Ireland's NMO for IFAC) and a Member of the IFAC Technical Committee on Cognition and Control. He is a staff member of the Callan Insitute, the Dynamics and Control Research Group, the Biomedical Engineering Research Group and the StratAG research cluster at NUI Maynooth and a Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Intelligent Systems and Control Research Group at Queen's University Belfast. He is also a member of Robo Eireann, an inter-disciplinary team of researchers at NUI Maynooth that compete annually in the NAO robot standard platform league of Robocup.

Dr. Steve Nightingale - Dr. Nightingale is the Chief Consultant of Electronic Design at Cobham Technical Services. He has been a Director of the European Microwave Association (EuMA), Chairman of the IEE Electronics and Communications Division and a visiting Professor at University of Surrey as well as holding other professional posts and advisory positions to the UK government and the MoD. Dr. Steve is a Registered European Engineer (Eur Ing), a Chartered Engineer (CEng), a Chartered Physicist (CPhys) and a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (FIEE) and the Institute of Physics (FInstP). He was recently elected to be a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (FIEEE) with the citation for contributions to planar microwave and milimeter wave circuits.

Mr Jef Beerten - Jef works at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Leuven (K.U.Leuven), Belgium. He is pursuing his PhD degree in power engineering, focusing on power system control and multi-terminal HVDC. He was involved in the organization of the Region 8 Student Branch and GOLD Congress (SBC) 2010 and has been the chairman of the student branch Leuven since 2009. As Awards and Contest Coordinator, he is responsible of the coordination of major awards and contests at the regional level as well as promoting the organization of contests at the more local level.

Ms. Eva Lang - Eva is a researcher working at the Institute for Software Systems in Technical Applications of Computer Science in Passau, Germany. She holds a Diploma degree in Computer Science and is doing her PhD in the field of sensor data processing. Eva joined the IEEE as a student member and has held various volunteer positions within the Student Activities and GOLD committees - making the IEEE more attractive students, recent graduates and young professionals. Currently she serves as the 2011 Region 8 Pre-University Activities Coordinator and Region 8 SAC Past Chair.

Mr Jorge Soares - Jorge is a Communication Networks Engineer and a PhD student in Distributed and Cognitive Robotics at Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland. He was Chair of the IEEE IST Student Branch, where he organized the first IEEE Iberian Student Branch Congress. He now serves as Mentor of the IST and UNL Student Branches. His role as Student Representative is to enhance the dialogue between all Region 8 students and the Committee, both for proposing new projects and for making members aware of the possibilities their membership gives them.

Mr. Brian Harrington - is the IEEE Region 8 Treasurer and Director of Ingrave Business Technology Ltd.

Mr. Andreas Koltes - is a PhD student at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. His main research interests lie in the areas of Embedded Systems, Reconfigurable Computing, Computer Architecture and System-on-a-Chip Integration. Besides this he is interested in challenges in the field of Technology and Innovation Management as well as in industrial R&D in the field of Electronics and Computer Hardware. He possesses industrial experience from internships and employment in multiple countries and served as a volunteer in different national positions in the IEEE and the German Informatics Society. Currently, He is the SAC Chair of the IEEE UKRI Section.

Dr Ioannis Patras - His research is in the area of Computer Vision and Pattern recognition with applications in Multimedia Analysis and Multimodal Human Computer Interaction, at the Multimedia and Vision lab at Queen Mary University of London. He is an associate editor of the Image and Vision Computing Journal and of the journal of Multimedia, the general chair of the 10th Int'l Workshop of Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services and in the organisation committee of a number of conferences and workshops. He is also the mentor for the QMUL IEEE Student Branch.

Dr Nihal Sinnadurai - Nihal Sinnadurai is a Consultant Engineer to industry in Electronics Technology, Reliability and Business Decision Analysis. He has worked in the high reliability industry for most of his industrial career, innovating, developing and delivering “fitness for purpose” solutions. He is also a Senior Expert of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) since 1982 for whom he has undertaken missions on technology transfer and skill training in electronics technology and quality and reliability, working with developing countries. He was Professor of Electronics Technology at Middlesex University and headed its Microelectronics department before returning to industry. His inventions include the HAST non-saturating autoclave test system and liquid crystal micro-thermography. He has authored over 70 papers and contributed to 6 books in the field of technology, reliability and testability of modern complex electronics assemblies. Nihal Sinnadurai has led and continues to Manage European Union projects on electronics packaging research and development. This includes EMCEM, the European Commission funded Co-operative Research Project on electro-magnetically shielding microelectronics packaging.

Dr. Kevin Byron - Kevin Byron received his Ph.D in Applied Physics from the University of Hull and pursued a career in research in the telecommunications industry for some twenty five years. Throughout his time in industry he also developed a growing interest in education and training and in particular creative skills, and the award of a three year NESTA Fellowship in 2002 enabled him to set up his own training consultancy to pursue these interests. As part of the fellowship he developed and delivered a number of skills training workshops to a range of groups including school children, undergraduates, university academics, local government managers and employees of corporations and SME's. During this period he was also a senior visiting fellow to The Higher Education Academy (HEA) (physical sciences branch) where he also developed a resource for academics for teaching enterprise skills. In 2008 he joined the student development team at the University of Leicester. Working with the science faculties he developed and presented a number of research skills workshops and resources for postgraduates as part of the roll-out of the Robert’s skills agenda. He is currently the enterprise education coordinator at Queen Mary, University of London and a free-lance trainer specialising in research skills, personal effectiveness and enterprise training for higher education and business.

Mr Harry Eakins - is an undergraduate student at Imperial College and extremely passionate about robotics and engineering. Having tinkered with robotics for many years before university, upon arriving at Imperial he founded the Imperial College Robotics Society (ICRS) with the aim of inspiring more students to explore engineering beyond the curriculum. Currently in it's second year, ICRS has already had a lot of success. They have built 2 RepRap 3D printers, created the world's first quadcopter with a fully printed chassis, exhibited at the UK Maker Faire in 2011 and this summer 5 of the students will be in Russia competing in the Eurobot competition's World Finals. Other than robotics, Harry has a keen interest in the Mandarin language.

Prof. Ali Hessami - He is Director of R&D and Innovation at Vega Systems mainly involved in the systems assurance methodologies and technologies with a background in design and development of computer based advanced control systems for critical industrial applications. He has spent the bulk of my career in industry as an engineer and manager, established an International record in the field of system safety and security assurance and have published many papers and lectured throughout Europe, Middle East, China, North America and Japan. Currently chairs the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society (SMCS) Chapter in the UK & Republic of Ireland, chair European Systems Safety Society (ESSS) and am the Principal UK Expert in CENELEC, the European Electro-technical Standardisation Organisation on Systems Safety & Integrity matters. Academically, he is appointed as a Visiting Professor at Beijing Jiaotong & London City University’s Centre for Risk Management, Reliability & Maintainability and Centre for Systems and Control.

Mr. Andreas Koltes - is a PhD student at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. His main research interests lie in the areas of Embedded Systems, Reconfigurable Computing, Computer Architecture and System-on-a-Chip Integration. Besides this he is interested in challenges in the field of Technology and Innovation Management as well as in industrial R&D in the field of Electronics and Computer Hardware. He possesses industrial experience from internships and employment in multiple countries and served as a volunteer in different national positions in the IEEE and the German Informatics Society. Currently, He is the SAC Chair of the IEEE UKRI Section.

Dr. Hazel Sales - Hazel Sales has observed bid teams in aerospace and defence engineering companies in Britain over the last seventeen years, and worked with them to resolve writing issues. Her long-held interest in what engineers say and write began in Singapore in the 1980s, when she was a lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic. Her experiences with engineering students and lecturers there motivated her to focus on engineering language and documents in her PhD research and book, entitled ‘Professional Communication in Engineering’, Palgrave Macmillan. She runs courses in English Language and Linguistics for British university students, specialising in grammar and academic writing. She also teaches engineers in the workplace about bid writing and professional communication.

Ms. Sabrina Wedderburn - Sabrina Wedderburn is a Careers Consultant for Queen Mary Careers, University of London. She holds the Postgradaute Diplomia in Guidance with Qualification in Carers Guidance and has worked in Higher Education Careers Services for 5 years. Her expertise are areas of recruitment and selection and she is currently working with undergraduates and postgraduates from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Computer Science; the School of Physics and Astronomy and the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

Ms. Belen Albeza - Belen Albeza is a developer working at INENSU, a social games startup based on East London. She has worked in other game companies, such as Six to Start and Lemon Team, developing games and mobile apps. She has a Computer Engineer degree and a master on Game Development.

Dr. Luis Ochao - He is a Lecturer in Smart Distribution Networks and part of the Electrical Energy and Power Systems Group in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester. From 2007 to 2010 I was a Research Fellow in Energy Systems with the Institute for Energy Systems in the School of Engineering at The University of Edinburgh, UK. In 2010, He undertook an industrial secondment with the Edinburgh-based company Psymetrix Ltd. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering gained at UNI (Peru), and a Research MSc and a PhD in Electrical Power Engineering, both gained at UNESP Ilha Solteira (Brazil). He has more than 60 research papers in peer-reviewed top ranked journals and top class international conference. He is also co-inventor of one patent filed by Psymetrix Ltd.

Prof Anthony C Davies Prof. Davies is a Fellow of IEEE and of IEE, a Member of the British Computer Society, and a Chartered Electrical Engineer. He is also a memberof the European Circuits Soceity. In 2000 he was awarded a 'third millennium medal' by IEEE "for outstanding achievements and contributions" and a Golden Jubilee medal of the IEEE Circuits & Systems Society. He served on the IEE Council from 1984 to 1987 and was Chairman of the IEEE UK and Republic of Ireland Section for 1992 and 1993. He has for the past few years been IEEE Region 8 Circuits and Systems Chapter Co-ordinator, and January 1997 to December 2000 was Chairman of the Region 8 Chapter Co-ordination Committee. He was Vice President for Region 8 of the Circuits & Systems Society (elected from January 1998 to December 2001), and also Region 8 Vice Chair for Technical Activites (elected from January 2001). He was elected (by the IEEE Region 8 membership) to the position of IEEE Region 8 Director-elect, and served as Region 8 Director from January 2003 to December 2004 (which includes service on the IEEE Board of Directors). As Past Region Director, he is still involved with various IEEE volunteer activities (for example, the IEEE TAB Society Review Committee and the Region 8 Nominations and Appointments Committee).

Dr Zhijia Huang - he joined IEEE as a student member in 2006 when he was a first year PhD student in Queen Mary University of London. The following year he re-activated the QMUL IEEE Student Branch in after the department of Electronic Engineering open day where IEEE UKRI Section is one of the main sponsor. Started as the branch chairman with a small core team of 7 volunteers of PhD students in computer science and electronic engineering, the new team attended the first UKRI Student Congress organised at University of York. Motivated and supported by the events and the organisers, QMUL SB land other volunteers won the organised the Region 8 Student Branch and GOLD Congress 2008 at QMUL. After a year of preparation, SBC2008 was held for 4 days in QMUL with great success. After the SBC, he moved on and joined the Region 8 News as one of the editors dedicated to report volunteer activities and achievements and latest volunteer benefits.