(A conversation with Prof. El Saddik)
Abdulmotaleb El Saddik (FRSC, FIEEE, FCAE, FEIC), is Distinguished University Professor and University Research Chair in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Ottawa. He is an internationally-recognized scholar who has made strong contributions to the knowledge and understanding of multimedia computing, communications and applications.
Prof. El Saddik is the director of the Medical Devices Innovation Institute (MDII) and the Multimedia Computing Research Laboratory (MCRLab). He is Senior Associate Editor of the ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications (ACM TOMM); Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia (IEEE TMM), Springer Multimedia Tools and Applications (MTAP); Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence (JETWI); International Journal on Smart Sensing and Intelligent Systems (S2IS); Journal of Multimedia (JMM), and Guest Editor for several IEEE Transactions and Springer and Elsevier Journals. Dr. El Saddik has been serving on several technical program committees of numerous IEEE and ACM events. He has been the General Chair and/or Technical Program Chair of more than 50 international conferences symposia and workshops on collaborative hapto-audio-visual environments, multimedia communications and instrumentation and measurement. He was the general co-chair of ACM MM 2008. He is leading researcher in smart health, Internet of things, haptics, social media, and collaborative and ambient interactive media and communications (smart cities). He has authored and co-authored three- patents, five books (Haptics Technologies: Bringing Touch to Multimedia; Interactive Multimedia Learning; Open Java; Haptics Rendering and Applications; and Advances in Multimedia Modeling part 1&2 (2013)) and more than 550 publications. He has received research grants and contracts totaling more than $18 million and has supervised more than 120 researchers.
Prof. El Saddik is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2020) a Fellow of the IEEE (2009), for his contributions to interactive haptic audio visual systems. He was also elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (2010) and Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (2010). He is the first Canadian in Computer Science & Engineering to receive the very prestigious Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award from the German Humboldt Foundation in 2007. He is the recipient of the Ontario Premier’s Research Excellence Award (PREA), in 2004 and the National Capital Institute of Telecommunications (NCIT) New Professorship Incentive Award (2004). In 2008 he was appointed an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, he also received the Professional of the Year Award, from the Canadian Lebanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Achievement in the Development of Canada. He has also received seven (7) Outstanding/Best Paper Awards. Dr. El Saddik is the recipient of the 2010 Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Distinguished Scientist Award, the 2011 Cátedra de Excelencia from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain and the 2010 IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society Technical Award, which is the highest award of IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement society, for his outstanding contributions to multimedia computing. Most recently, he received the Faculty of Engineering’s George S. Glinski Award for Excellence in Research for 2012. He also received the 2012 IEEE Ottawa Educator Award and the 2013 IEEE Canada Achievement Award: C.C. Gotlieb (Computer) Medal for important contributions to the field of computer engineering and science. In 2015, Dr. El Saddik received the University of Ottawa Award for Excellence in Research. In 2018, he received IEEE Canada G.L. McNaughton Gold Medal for outstanding contributions to Multimodal Sensory Computing and Communications.
See Dr. El Saddik’s profiles at Google, Scopus, ORCID, and dblp.