On January 2023, IEEE Region 8 SAC team was renewed for the 2023-24 term. Led by Abdullateef Aliyu, the Region 8 Vice-Chair of Student Activities for 2023-24, a cross-sectional, diverse, and talented team was brought-together to kick-start the Region 8 student activities. This year, however, the R8 SAC team brings forward a brand new structure along with new initiatives. The main team constitutes of 7 members, where three of these are Chairs for their respective Adhoc Committees. The new three Adhoc committees are as follows: “Contest, Awards & Recognition”, “Training and Leadership Support” and “New Initiatives”. Together, the team is working to support and develop all aspects of R8 Student Activities. The aim is to provide excellent support to Student Branches, Student Chapters, SIGHT Groups, WIE Student Branches Affinity Groups and Student Branch Counsellors in the region. The SAC team operates different programs, training and development sessions, competitions, and awards that promote a better growth-based ecosystem for all student activities in Region 8. New trainings, activities, initiatives, competitions, and awards are coming soon!
Meet the main IEEE R8 SAC Team:
Abdullateef Aliyu
2023-24 Chair, R8 SAC
Abdullateef is the General Manager of projects in Phase 3 Telecom, an aerial fiber-optic network infrastructure provider in West Africa, He is also a Senior Vice President of IEEE Smart Village and Currently chairs the IEEE Region 8 Students Activities Committee as Vice Chair of Student activities. He received his bachelor’s degree from Bayero University Kano (BUK), and master’s in ICT from the Northern University of Malaysia with Honors. He is an Alumnus of the United States telecommunication training institute (USTTI), Washington DC. He joined phase 3 Telecom in 2013 where he helped deployed numerous high-profile projects in Nigeria and across Sub-Sahara Africa for Mobile Network Operators (MNO) and led the implementation of the Phase 3 telecom 100G transmission network across Nigeria. He is a recipient of several awards and recognitions that include and not limited to the Leadership and Innovative Award by Phase 3 telecom in 2022, the Best Creativity Award by Phase 3 Telecom in 2022, the Excellence in leadership Award 2022 by IEEE Smart Village, the Award of Excellence by IEEE Nigeria Section 2022 for NIGERCON 2022, the Award of Excellence by the NSE Maitama branch 2021, MGA Board Young Professionals Achievement Award 2019, Recipient of Outstanding Volunteer of IEEE R8 ASYP Congress 2017 (EMEA), and IEEE Nigeria Section Merit Award 2017 (NG).
E-mail: [email protected]
Simay Akar
Past Chair, R8 SAC
Simay Akar is an entrepreneur with reputable corporate industrial background and experience in the energy industry. She specialized in photovoltaic manufacturing, battery storage for electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies and the clean energy market development. Akar is currently the Chief Commercial Officer & Co-Founder at Innoses. Her past roles include Sales & Marketing Director of EkoRE – Eko Renewable Energy and 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 and she participated Energy Innovation and Emerging Technologies Program at Stanford University.
Read more at: https://www.simayakar.com/
E-mail: [email protected]
Maryam Saeed
R8 Regional Student Representative
Maryam Saeed is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University College Dublin. She is a recipient of the Schlumberger Faculty for the Future Award for doctoral studies. Her current research includes designing arrhythmia classifiers for low-power circuits using event-driven ADCs, signal processing and machine learning. She has previously worked on neural spike sorting for implanted brain circuits and EEG-based biomedical applications. She received her M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad. She has also received training in EEG data acquisition and equipment handling at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. Her IEEE journey started in 2008 at the IEEE Lahore Section, Region 10. She first joined as a student volunteer at the FAST-NU Student branch, then as the Chair WIE, from 2009-2010. She was the founding member of the All-Pakistan Women in Engineering Forum, created in 2012 (http://sites.ieee.org/pakistan-wie-forum/) and served as their General Secretary. She also worked as the WIE Mentor for the IEEE WIE SEECS branch in 2014. Then she joined the IEEE WIE Islamabad Section as their General Secretary. Her volunteer work included organizing the WIE conferences, administering the IEEE STAR program locally and collaborative work with the local WeCreate branch (http://pakistan.wecreatecenter.com/) to help young graduates build new start-ups. In 2015 she was awarded the IEEE R10 WIE Professional Volunteer Award.
E-mail: [email protected]
Vera Marković
Chair, Adhoc Committee “Contest, Awards & Recognition”
Vera Marković is a full professor and the Head of the 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: [email protected]
Khaldoun Taktak
Chair, Adhoc Committee “Training and Leadership Support”
Khaldoun Taktak is a Network and Telecommunication Engineering Student at the National Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology (INSAT). Besides pursuing an engineering degree, he loves dedicating his free time to reading, volunteering and experiencing new cultures. He serves as the chair of the IEEE Region 8 AdHoc committee on training and leadership support. Previously, he was chair of the IEEE Region 8 Student and Young Professional Congress in 2022 which was held in Tunis, Tunisia and has always been an active volunteer within his Student Branch contributing to the organization of many local events and congresses. As a dedicated and active IEEE volunteer, Khaldoun firmly believes that volunteering and engineering combined together will help advance technology for the benefit of humanity especially when derived from students.
E-mail: [email protected]
Vildana Hrnjić
Chair, Adhoc Committee “New Initiatives”
Vildana is a young entrepreneur with a big experience in Branding and Marketing. She is currently the Chief Marketing Officer of the Association VivaBiH in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During her student days at the department of Graphic Engineering and Design at the Faculty of Technology in Banja Luka, she was an active IEEE Volunteer in her Student Branch where she was Treasurer and Social Media Manager. Since January 2021, she became part of the R8 SAC as an Outreach Coordinator and Electronic Communications Coordinator.
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 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.
E-mail: [email protected]
Mohamed Hatem
Electronic Communications Coordinator
Mohamed Hatem is a Senior Undergraduate 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 Technology 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 at 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 communication 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 the IEEE Egypt Section. Hatem has been always mandated with his community development, progress, and sustainability.
E-mail: [email protected]
