Plenary Speakers
Plenary – I
Monday, February 12, 2024, 8:00 – 9:40 am (Onsite) – Ballroom
8:00 – 8:20 am
Prof. John Kiong Chai
Professor and Dept. Chair
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department
United Arab Emirates University
Al Ain, Abu Dhabi
United Arab Emirates
8:20 – 8:40 am

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Dr Sayyad Zahid Qamar
Professor, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department
Room 2052, Box 33, College of Engineering
Sultan Qaboos University
Al-Khodh 123, Muscat, OMAN
Dr Sayyad Zahid Qamar is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering Department at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), Muscat, Oman. He has over 30 years of academic and research experience in different international universities. He has also worked as a professional mechanical engineer in the field for over 6 years in the heavy engineering and fabrication industry (Manager Research and Development; Deputy Manager Design; Production Engineer; Quality Control Engineer). On top of his experience as a researcher/academician, he has been actively involved in research and accreditation work related to engineering education. His research areas are Applied materials and manufacturing; Applied mechanics and design; Reliability engineering; and Engineering education. As part of the Applied Mechanics and Advanced Materials Research group (AM2R) at SQU, he has been involved in different applied research funded projects in excess of 4 million dollars. He has over 225 research/technical publications to his credit (research monographs/books, edited book volumes, book chapters, publications in refereed international journals and conferences, and technical reports). He has recently authored a book titled Swelling Elastomers in Petroleum Drilling and Development — Applications, Performance Analysis, and Material Modeling; edited one volume (Renewability of Synthetic Materials) for the Elsevier Encyclopedia of Renewable and Sustainable Materials; and is currently editing one volume (Thermal Engineering of Steel Alloy Systems) in the 13-volume series Comprehensive Materials Processing, 2nd edition by Elsevier; and is editing a book on Quality Assurance and Quality Control by Intech International. He has served as Associate editor, Guest editor, and Member editorial board for different research journals (including Materials and Manufacturing Processes, Journal of Elastomers and Plastics, the Journal of Engineering Research, American Journal of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, etc.)
8:40 – 9:00 am
Dr. Tryfon Theodorou
Vice Dean at the Inspection Technology and Quality Assurance National Institute (ITQAN)
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Applications of Intelligent Software Defined Network protocols in IIoT wireless communications
9:00 – 9:20 am
Dr Kaouther Ghacham
Associate Professor
Department of Industrial Engineering, and Systems
College of Engineering
Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Director of the student chapter PNU-CEN, Riyadh, KSA
Kaouther Ghacham is an Associate Professor within the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, participates as a Committee Member for the Industrial Engineering and Systems Programs, Head of the accreditation committee, Internal reviewer of the industrial and systems program and holds the position of Director for the Measurement and Evaluation Administration at the College of Engineering at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, also engaged in active research, focusing on optimizing energy systems.
9:20 – 9:40 am
António João Pina da Costa Feliciano Abreu, PhD
Associate Professor with Habilitation
Polytechnic University of Lisbon
Coordinator of the MSc in Industrial Engineering and Management
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Lisboa, Portugal
Before joining the academic world in 1998, he had an industrial career since 1992 in manufacturing industries with management positions. He concluded his PhD in 2007, and the Habilitation title in 2020, in Industrial Engineering.
He is member of several international associations e.g. IFAC at TC5.3 Enterprise Integration & Networking, ISO/TC 258, and INSTICC – Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication. He is co-founder of SOCOLNET – Society of Collaborative Networks.
As researcher, he has been involved in several National and European research projects. He has been involved in the organization and member of the program committees of several national and international conferences. He is member of review board and editorial board of several international journals.
He has more than 130 publications in books, journals, and conferences proceedings in the area of logistics, project management, quality management, open-Innovation, risk management and lean management.
9:40 – 10:00 am
Prof. Juan Carlos Quiroz
Research Professor of Industrial Engineering
Faculty of Engineering
University of Lima
Lima, Peru
Plenary II
Tuesday, February 13, 2024, 8:00 – 9:40 am (Onsite) – Ballroom
8:00 – 8:20 am
Sajid Anwar, Ph.D.
Professor of Computer Science
Institute of Management Sciences
Peshawar, Pakistan
Member Board Committee, Institute of Creative Advanced Technologies, Science, and Engineering, South Korea
Associate Editor: Computers and Electrical Engineering, Elsevier
Associate Editor: Expert Systems Journal, Wiley
Academic Editor: PLOSE ONE
Associate Editor: Network: Computation in Neural Systems
International Chair/General Co-Chair: International Conference on Information Technology and Applications
Biography
Dr. Sajid Anwar is Professor at the Centre of Excellence in Information Technology Institute of Management Sciences (IMSciences), Peshawar, Pakistan. He received his MS (Computer Science, 2007) and Ph.D degrees (Computer Science, 2011) from NUCES-FAST, Islamabad. Previously, he was head of Undergraduate Program in Software Engineering at IMSciences.
Dr. Sajid Anwar is leading expert in Mining Software Repositories. His research interests are cross-disciplinary & industry focused and includes: Search based Software Engineering; Prudent based Expert Systems; Customer Analytics, Active Learning and applying Data Mining and Machine Learning techniques to solve real world problems. Dr. Sajid Anwar is Associate Editor of Computers & Electrical Engineering Elsevier, PLOS ONE, Expert Systems Journal Wiley, and Network: Computation in Neural Systems Taylor & Francis. He has been a Guest Editor of numerous journals, such as Neural Computing and Applications, Cluster Computing Journal Springer, Grid Computing Journal Springer, Expert Systems Journal Wiley, Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies Wiley, and Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory Journal Springer. He is also Member Board Committee Institute of Creative Advanced Technologies, Science and Engineering, Korea (iCatse.org) http://icatse.org/. He has conducted and led collaborative research with Govt. organizations and academia and has published over 60 research articles in prestigious journals and conferences. He had/has supervised/co-supervising several Ph.D. and Master Students. He served as the International Chair/ General Co-Chair of the ICITA (15th, 16th, 17th International Conference on Information Technology and Applications). He served as the workshop chair of the ISEA (1st , 2nd , 3rd, 4th International Workshop on Intelligent Software Engineering Automation) associated with APSEC (28th , 29th ,30th Asia Pacific Software Engineering Conference) and NLP-SEA (1st, 2nd International Workshop on Software Engineering Automation: A Natural language Perspective) associate with ASE (35th , 36th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering).
8:20 – 8:40 am
Dr. Elie Menassa
Dean
Amity Business School Dubai
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Social Responsibility in Operations and Supply Chain
Professor Elie Menassa is a Lebanese-Australian national currently based in Dubai. He has extensive teaching experience and serves now as full professor of Accounting and Dean of Amity Business School Dubai. Previously, he was the Dean at Notre Dame University Lebanon and has held various academic, administrative, and visiting positions at other universities in the USA, UK, Germany, Cyprus, and Lebanon.
A board member and former President and Vice President of several non-profit and public institutions, Professor Elie has also held senior managerial positions at reputable organisations like PricewaterhouseCoopers, Eternit SAL, Libano-Suisse SAL, and Somerfield LTD (UK). In addition to three active professional licenses (CFE, CRMA, and FAIA Acad.), Professor Elie’s academic qualifications include a Doctorate in Accounting and Finance from Leicester Business School, UK, and a Postdoctoral position at Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame, USA.
Professor Elie is also an active researcher with publications in top refereed academic journals and professional outlets and a reviewer for many authoritative journals and conference proceedings.
8:40 – 9:00 am
K.M. Sharath Kumar, Ph.D.
Professor & Head – Management and Commerce
(Supply Chain Management and DEA)
Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences
Bangalore – 560 054, India
Dr K M Sharath Kumar is the Director of Research and an Associate Professor at the Department of Management Studies under the Faculty of Management and Commerce, RUAS. He has served in the capacity of Deputy Director – Sponsored Research and previously was a full-time Faculty and Coordinator — Sponsored Research in the Department of Management Studies. He is a life member of the Indian Society of Technical Education.
He has served as a PhD Examiner and has supervised the doctoral thesis of students. As a member of the Research and Innovation Council – RUAS, he is responsible for managing International Partnerships. He is also in-charge of managing Patents and Patent Commercialisation process for the Research and Exchange (both Faculty and Student) initiative at the university. He has more than 15 years of teaching and research experience.
He brings with him extensive knowledge of coordinating funded research activities with various organisations in the government, public and private sectors. He leverages his considerable skills as a leader in assembling high-performance teams, setting goals and successfully achieving them.
Dr Sharath Kumar graduated in Mechanical Engineering and also completed his Master’s degree in Business Administration with a specialisation in Marketing. In addition, he has a PhD degree offered by Coventry University, UK. His research is primarily focused on Management Science, Operations Management, Mathematical Modelling, Logistics and Supply Chain Management.
9:00 – 9:20 am
Dr. Umar Asghar
Discipline Leader (Civil and Mechanical Engineering)
Assistant Professor
School of Engineering
University of Wollongong Dubai (UOWD)
UAE
Topic: Additive Manufacturing
Dr Umar Asghar is Assistant Professor at the University of Wollongong in Dubai (UOWD).Prior to joining UOWD Dr Asghar was working as lead engineer in the design and development of port access systems for minimally invasive surgery at Surgical Innovations Ltd in UK.
Dr Asghar has several years’ experience in the industry across Nuclear, Defence, Medical Engineering and Manufacturing. He worked as a design engineer on material handling machines for the nuclear industry and has extensive experience in managing and delivering projects from design engineering, project management, project controls, quality assurance and stakeholder management.
9:20 – 9:40 pm
Professor Sulaiman Al-Zuhair
Professor of Chemical Engineering
Assistant Dean for Research and Graduate Studies
College of Engineering
United Arab Emirates University, UAE
Talk Title: Utilization of enzymes for enhanced CO2 removal and conversion
Sulaiman Al-Zuhair is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at UAE University and currently holds the position of Assistant Dean for Research and Graduate Studies. Before that, he held the positions of Head of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department, Director of Project Management Unit and Coordinator of the Postgraduate Program. Prof. Al-Zuhair’s research resulted in publication of over 100 papers in Scopus and his current Scopus h-index is 34. He also has five patents under his name and published an authored book and three book chapters. As a Principal Investigator, Prof. Al-Zuhair was able to secure research funds of over AED 3 million dirhams, and over AED 20 million as a Co-Investigator. He is the recipient of the Dubai Award for Sustainable Transport (Best Academic Research) and the UAEU Research Excellence Award in 2019, and College of Engineering Excellence Research Award in 2016 and 2020. Prof. Al-Zuhair is on the Editorial Boards in a number of journals, and had held positions in the scientific and organizing committees of several international conferences.