Biography:

Mohamed A. El-Sharkawi is a Fellow of IEEE. He received his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Cairo High Institute of Technology (Currently, Helwan University) in 1971, and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia in 1980. In 1980 he joined the University of Washington as a faculty member where he is presently a Professor of Electrical Engineering. He also served as the Associate Chair and the Chairman of Graduate Studies and Research. Professor El-Sharkawi served as the Vice President for Technical Activities of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. He served as a member of the administrative committee of the IEEE Neural Networks Council representing the IEEE Power Engineering Society, and was the societys Multi-Media chair. He is the founder of the international conference on the Application of Neural Networks to Power Systems (ANNPS) and co-founder of the international conference on Intelligent Systems Applications to Power (ISAP). He is the founder and chair of the Northwest Energy System Symposium (NWESS). He is also a member of the organizing committees of numerous regional and international conferences. Professor El-Sharkawi is the founding chairman of numerous IEEE task forces, working groups and subcommittees. He organized and chaired numerous panels and special sessions in IEEE and other professional organizations. He organized and taught several international tutorials on intelligent systems applications, energy management systems, renewable energy, electric safety, load forecasting, vulnerability assessment, VAR management, and power systems operations. Professor El-Sharkawi is a member of the editorial boards and is the associate editor of several journals. He served as editor/co-editor of several IEEE tutorial books on Intelligent Systems and Applications. He published over 200 papers and book chapters in his research areas. He authored two textbooks on fundamentals of Electric Drives and Electric Energy: An Introduction. He also authored and co-authored 4 research books in the area of intelligent systems. He holds 5 licensed patents in the area of renewable energy VAR management, and minimum arc sequential circuit breaker switching. Professor El-Sharkawi served as an external evaluator for several engineering and research programs in Middle-East universities. He also consults in the areas of electric safety, systems operation and control, power systems, renewable energy and intelligent systems.

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