At the beginning of the year, a new set of officers has taken over the leadership of our section for the term 2016 – 2017. They are:

IEEE Toronto Section Chair

Thamir (Tom) Murad, PhD, PEng, FEC, IEEE SM

Director, Head of Siemens Engineering and Technology Academy
Contact: dr.t.murad@ieee.org

Dr. Tom Murad is the Head of Siemens Engineering and Technology Academy, in Siemens Canada, with over 35 years of experience in professional engineering and technical operations executive management including more than 10 years of academic and R&D work in industrial controls and automation.

In the last four years, he worked within Siemens Canada as the Head of Expert House and Engineering Director in the Industry Sector. Prior to joining Siemens Canada, Tom was the Senior Vice President and COO of AZZ-Blenkhorn & Sawle, an engineering system integration and technical solutions provider in Ontario, specialized in power distribution and controls in various industrial and infrastructure applications. He has previously held various V.P. and Director positions in a number of engineering and industrial organizations internationally, and contributed to many large global industrial projects.

Dr. Murad is a Fellow of Engineers Canada and a member of Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO), APEGA in Alberta, and NAPEG in the Northwest Territories, as well as a Senior Member of IEEE in various technical societies.
Tom earned a Bachelor of Engineering and a Doctorate (Ph.D.) in Power Electronics and Industrial Controls from the Loughborough University of Technology in the UK. He also received a Leadership Program Certificate from Schulich Business School, York University.
Currently, Dr. Murad serves on a number of advisory boards in the industry and academia. He has been an active member of the PEO Licensing “Engineering Experience Review” Committee for the last 12 Years.

IEEE Toronto Section Vice-Chair

Olivier Trescases, PhD, PEng, IEEE SM

Associate Professor, University of Toronto
Contact: olivier@ieee.org

Olivier Trescases received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 2007. From 2007 to 2008, he worked as a concept engineer and mixed-signal IC designer at Infineon Technologies in Austria. While at Infineon, he designed application-specific ICs in BCD technologies for safety-critical automotive applications, such as electronic control units for airbag modules. Dr. Trescases joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto as an Assistant Professor in 2009 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014. He conducts research on power electronics for automotive, industrial, aerospace and renewable energy applications. He is the co-inventor for six patents. Dr. Trescases has published over 60 papers in IEEE conferences and journals. He received three best-paper awards, one IEEE Vehicular Technology award as well as the 2010 Green Innovation Award from the City of Toronto. He is a member of the executive committee for the IEEE Toronto Section and has served on the technical committee of various IEEE conferences, including the Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC), the International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices & ICS (ISPSD), the Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) and the Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference (VPPC).

IEEE Toronto Section Secretary

Ali Nabavi, PhD, PEng, IEEE SM

Senior Research Associate, University of Toronto
Contact: nabavi@ieee.org

Dr. Nabavi received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, and his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto in 1996. Upon graduation, he joined the University of Mazandaran, Iran, as a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Since then he has been actively engaged in research and development in the general area of power electronics, motor drives and teaching and supervising of graduate students. He was elevated to the rank of associate professor in 2003. Since 2004, he has been with the Energy Systems Group, Department of ECE, University of Toronto, as a Senior Research Associate and has been actively collaborating on several research projects with various utility and aerospace industries including ABB and Honeywell. His research interests include analysis, operation and control of power electronics in power systems.

IEEE Toronto Section Treasurer

Marjan Alavi, PhD

Lecturer, George Brown College
Contact: alavi@ieee.org

Dr. Alavi received her Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering (Control and Instrumentations) from K.N. Toosi University of Technology in 2004 and her Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering (Micro- and Nano-Electronic Devices) from Sharif University of Technology in 2007. She received the Singapore International Graduate Award in January 2010 and has a Ph.D. from the School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering of Nanyang Technological University (NTU). She was a research associate at NTU working with Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology and Rolls-Royce on developing model-based fault diagnosis, fault tolerant control, and prognosis methods for hybrid systems. She was a member of the Electronics Department at Bloorintar Co. where she designed and manufactured programmable power supplies and electronic lab instruments. She was also a member of the Academic Board at Azad University where she taught several courses including Analog and Digital Electronics and was a researcher at the University of Toronto. She has 14 refereed publications and serves as a reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics.

We are grateful to Tom, Olivier, Ali and Marjan for their dedication to the IEEE and the Toronto Section, and wish them all the best in their new positions.