IEEE Region 8 Student Activities Committee 2021
IEEE Region 8 SAC 2021 Team. 13 Members … 13 Sections … ONE Team!
On the 17th of January, 2021, the IEEE Region 8 SAC Team for season 2021 was first established. Simay Akar, the Region 8 Vice-Chair of Student Activities and SAC Chair for 2021-2022 has gathered a cross-sectional diversified talented team to kick Region 8 Student-based activities for 2021. The team is constituted of 13 members who are working in a cross-based strategy in 10 parallel working groups that are handling all support and development aspects for all R8 Student Activities progress and prosperity! These 10 working groups are covering all needed support for all Student Branches, Student Chapters, SIGHT Groups, WIE Student Branches Affinity Groups, Student Branches Counselors along with operating different programs, pieces of training, competitions, and awards for better growth based ecosystem for all R8 student activities. Await for various activities, initiatives, competitions, and awards soon!
Get to know more about the IEEE R8 SAC Team:
Simay Akar
Chair, Student Activities Committee, and Vice-Chair Student of Region 8
“Simay Akar has been working in the energy industry since 2012. She specialized in solar and renewable energy fields.
Akar is currently the Chief Commercial Officer & Co-Founder at Innoses.
Additional current roles include Sales & Marketing Director of EkoRE – Eko Renewable Energy and Marketing & Business Development Director of GoodWe Turkey, Head of Overseas Marketing at Talesun Solar
Akar has worked in China and Turkey and mostly focused on international commercial activities and has been employed by CSUN Eurasia, Schneider Electric, Arcelik (BEKO), and Lucida Solar. In addition to her professional acclimates, she is an IEEE Senior member, acknowledged volunteer since 2007. Simay is a graduate of Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.”
To know more, please visit www.simayakar.com.
E-mail: simay@ieee.org
Maciej Borowka
Past Chair, IEEE Region 8 Student Activities Committee
E-mail: maciejborowka@ieee.org
Theodoros Panagiotis Chatzinikolaou
Regional Student Representative, IEEE Region 8
“Theodoros is currently Ph.D. Candidate and Teaching Assistant in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the Democritus University of Thrace, and has received his Engineering Diploma with Integrated Master from the aforementioned Department. His research interests focus on future and emerging computing systems and cutting-edge technologies, including memristive circuits and systems and artificial intelligence technologies.
Theodoros serves the IEEE Region 8 as the Regional Student Representative, he is an IEEE Brand Ambassador, he has served various IEEE OUs including the MGA SAC and his local Student Branch through many positions, and he has chaired the 5th IEEE Hellenic Student and Young Professional Congress. He has received various distinctions for his activity with the latest to be the IEEE Larry K. Wilson Award. As an active IEEE volunteer, he strongly believes engineering and volunteerism combined can create a valuable impact on humanity and society, especially when they are derived from students.”
E-mail: theodoros.chatzinikolaou@ieee.org
Davide Morgado
Student Branches Coordinator, IEEE Region 8
“Davide is pursuing his academic studies at Aveiro University in Portugal. He is a Masters’ Degree candidate in Electronics and Telecommunications.
Davide’s journey at IEEE started in 2017 when he participated in one of the robotics competition programs IEEE organize. Afterward, He joined the Aveiro Student Branch as a member. In 2018, He chaired the Student Branch for 2 years. In 2020, He accepted the invitation to be the Sectional Student Representative (SSR) in the IEEE Portugual Section.”
E-mail: davidemorgado@ieee.org
Oscar M. Bonastre
Student Branches Counselors Coordinator, IEEE Region 8
“Oscar M. Bonastre received the Master’s degree in computer engineering from the University of Alicante, Spain, and the Ph.D. degree in telecom engineering from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain. He is with the Department of Statistics, Maths, and Computing, University Miguel Hernandez, Spain, where he is also a contributor with the Operations Research Institute. He has more than 23 years of background in academia and industry, his research interests include the development of the Internet and advanced distributed systems. He has served as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Education. In 2020, he was the recipient of the IEEE Edwin C. Jones, Jr. Meritorious Service Award. He is a senior member of the IEEE.”
To know more, please visit ieeer8.org/people/oscar
E-mail: ombonastre@ieee.org
Muhammad Al-Barham
Student Branch Chapters Coordinator, IEEE Region 8
“Mohamed Al-Barham is a very curious person about science and technology. He also loves to help others promote the advancement of technology around the world for the benefit of humanity. He is very proud to have been a member of the IEEE community for over 4 years. Currently, he is the IEEE student representative Jordan Section for the year 2020-2022 and the chair of the IEEE University Jordan Student Branch for the year 2019-2021. He is a fifth-year mechatronics engineering student at the University of Jordan. He is interested in learning and working in the fields of artificial intelligence and deep learning, especially in computer vision. Finally, he hopes to help the IEEE community and contribute to the advancement of technology in the world.”
E-mail: muhammadal-brham@ieee.org
Lee Crudgington
SAC Awards and Contest Coordinator, IEEE Region 8
“Lee serves as the awards and contests coordinator in the Region 8 Student Activities Committee in addition to being chair of student activities and chapter co-ordinator in the UK and Ireland Section. Lee also serves as secretary of the IEEE Photonics Society in the UK and Ireland, and the IEEE Power & Energy Society CSAC committee.
Lee is an engineering business student at KU Leuven in Brussels, Belgium. Prior to this, Lee completed a Ph.D. in photovoltaic technologies in 2015 and has worked in the photonics and digital communications sectors.”
E-mail: l.j.c@ieee.org
Vera Markovic
Student Paper Contest Coordinator, IEEE Region 8
“Vera Marković is a full professor and the Head of Department of Telecommunications of the Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Niš, Serbia. She has been an IEEE member since 1992 and a senior member since 2015. She was the Secretary, Vice-chair, and Chair of the Serbia & Montenegro Section (2007-2018). Thereafter, she was a member of the R8 N&A Subcommittee (2019–2020) and as the R8 Membership Development Subcommittee corresponding member (2020). Currently, in addition to the duties of the R8 SPC Coordinator, she is also an MGA Member Benefits Portfolio Advisory Committee member (2020-2021) and an IEEE Global Public Policy Committee Member (2021-2022).”
E-mail: veram@ieee.org
Gerard Duff
IEEE Region 8 SAC-Young Professionals Liaison
“Gerard Duff was born and raised in Ireland and has been living in Sweden for the last 8 years. He received his master’s degree in Intelligent Embedded Systems in 2014 from Mälardalen University, Sweden. He is employed at Syntronic – a leading design house specializing in advanced product and systems development, production, and aftermarket services. As a Software engineering consultant, he is currently on assignment at a Gävle based company, InCoax Networks, developing innovative broadband solutions.
An IEEE member for 4 years, he began volunteering as the IEEE Sweden YP Chair. After helping to organize the IEEE NSYP19 (the first SYP congress held on the water!) as part of the YP Sweden and YP Finland team and being on the team to organize the R8vSYP20 (the first SYP congress held virtually) Gerard is looking forward to representing as an R8 Student Activities Committee Member and working for all the awesome IEEE student members throughout Region 8. When Gerard gets some downtime he likes playing piano, dancing the tango, and watching and pretending that he can play football! “
E-mail: gerardduff@ieee.org
Fayrouz Fattoum
SIGHT Student Groups Coordinator, IEEE Region 8
“Fayrouz has received the B.Sc degree in Chemical Process Engineering from the National Engineering School of Gabes, ENIG, Tunisia in 2020.
Fayrouz is an IEEE member for 5 years, she started volunteering as the chair of the IEEE ENIG Student Branch (2017 & 2018) and received the Exemplary student branch award in 2018 during the R8 SYP, Porto. She is interested in Humanitarian technologies and with her team, she won the second prize of the CMD Humanitarian Project contest for their project “Ecol’lo Irrigation System” during the IEEE IAS Annual Meeting 2018, Portland, USA.
She is part of the IEEE R8 Humanitarian Activities Committee since 2018 and currently, she become the IEEE R8 SAC SIGHT Student Groups coordinator.
When Fayrouz some free time, she likes traveling, reading, and volunteering.“
E-mail:fairouzfattoum@ieee.org
Sally Musonye
WIE Student Branch Affinity Groups Coordinator, IEEE Region 8
“Sally is a Design and Construction Engineer at the Kenya Power and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from The University of Nairobi (UoN).
She is a qualified and registered engineer with the Engineers Board of Kenya (EBK) and The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). She is the Treasurer for the Kenya Section, Chairperson for the Power and Energy Society (PES), and Publicity regional rep (Africa) for YESIST12. In Region 8, she serves in the Students Activities Committee (SAC) 2021 and a subcommittee member for Women in Engineering 2021. Sally is the past chairperson for IEEE Women in Engineering (Kenya) and the Engineering Students’ Association (UoN). She is a recipient of the KPLC Excellence Award for outstanding performance and the Kenya Section Women in Engineering (WiE) Achievement Award.”
E-mail: sally.musonye.ke@ieee.org
Vildana Hrnjic
SAC Outreach Coordinator, IEEE Region 8
“Vildana has a Bachelor of Science degree in Graphic Engineering and Design from the University of Banja Luka. She was an active Volunteer in her Student Branch in Banja Luka where she was Treasurer and Social Media Manager.
Vildana (co-)wrote a few conference papers about the concepts of green technologies in the graphic industries as well as the power of individuals to contribute to her society.
She primarily works as a Brand Designer & Strategist. As an educator and mentor, she loves to share her knowledge and empower young people to work in IT. Currently, Vildana is the CMO in one Association and a young entrepreneur as she founded her digital marketing agency.”
E-mail: vildanahrnjic22@gmail.com
Mohamed Hatem
SAC Digital Communications Coordinator, IEEE Region 8
“Mohamed Hatem is a Senior Undergddaute Student at the Nanotechnology and Nano-electronics Engineering Department at the University of Science and Technology in Zewail City for Science, Technology, and Innovation. He is pursuing in final semsters on the MEMS Technolgy and Nano-devices concentration along with a Graduation Project focused on the development of new Gate-All-Around Ge-based FETs.
Besides, Hatem has been a volunteer in IEEE since 2016. After one year and in 2017, Hatem acted as the IEEE Zewail City Student Branch Chairperson in which he developed exceptional leadership and communciation skills. After a while, Hatem started volunteering in his section Young Professionals and SIGHT groups in which he held leadership positions in all of their programs. In 2020, Hatem has been selected to be the Sectional Student Representative (SSR) of IEEE Egypt Section. Hatem has been always mandated with his community development, progress, and sustainability.”
E-mail: s-mohamed.hatem@zewailcity.edu.eg
