CONFERENCE CO-CHAIR

Prof. Tarek M. Sobh
Vice President for Graduate Studies and Research
Dean, School of Engineering
Fellow, African Academy of Sciences
University of Bridgeport, USA

Biography of the Conference Co-Chair

Professor Tarek M. Sobh received the B.Sc. in Engineering degree with honors in Computer Science and Automatic Control from the Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Egypt in 1988, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer and Information Science from the School of Engineering, University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and 1991, respectively. He is currently the Vice President for Graduate Studies and Research and Dean of the School of Engineering at the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut; the Founding Director of the Interdisciplinary Robotics, Intelligent Sensing, and Control (RISC) laboratory; and a Professor of Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.
He was the Vice Provost from 2006-2008, Interim Dean of the School of Business, Director of External Engineering Programs, Interim Chairman of Computer Science and Computer Engineering, and Chairman of the Department of Technology Management at the University of Bridgeport . He was an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Computer Engineering at the University of Bridgeport from 1995-1999, a Research Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Department of Computer Science , University of Utah from 1992-1995, and a Research Fellow at the General Robotics and Active Sensory Perception (GRASP) Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania from 1989-1991. He was the Founding Chairman of the Discrete Event and Hybrid Systems Technical Committee of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society from 1992-1999, and the Founding Chairman of the Prototyping Technical Committee of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society from 1999-2001.
His background is in the fields of computer science and engineering, control theory, robotics, automation, manufacturing, AI, computer vision and signal processing.
Research Interests and Activities
Dr. Sobh's current research interests include reverse engineering and industrial inspection, CAD/CAM and active sensing under uncertainty, robots and electromechanical systems prototyping, sensor-based distributed control schemes, unifying tolerances across sensing, design, and manufacturing, hybrid and discrete event control, modeling, and applications, and mobile robotic manipulation. He has published over 180 refereed journal and conference papers, and book chapters in these and other areas, in addition to 11 books. Professor Sobh is also interested in developing theoretical and experimental tools to aid performing adaptive goal-directed robotic sensing for modeling, observing and controlling interactive agents in unstructured environments.
Dr. Sobh serves on the editorial boards of 12 journals, and has served as Chair, Technical Program Chair and on the program committees of over 135 international conferences and workshops in the Robotics, Automation, Sensing, Computing, Systems, Control, Online Engineering and Engineering Education areas.
Dr. Sobh has presented more than 75 keynote speeches, invited talks and lectures, colloquia and seminars at research meetings, University departments, research centers, and companies.

Some of the current research and development activities that he leads at the RISC laboratory include work on tolerance representation and determination for inspection and manufacturing, hybrid controllers for robotics and automation, service robots, prototyping and synthesis of controllers, simulators, and monitors for manipulators, algorithms for uncertainty computation from sense data, and web-based prototyping, control synthesis, and simulation of robots.
Prof. Sobh has supervised 35 award-winning graduate and undergraduate students working on different projects within robotics, prototyping, computer vision, control, and manufacturing; in addition to more than 300 undergraduate and graduate students working on their B.S. projects, Master's thesis or Ph.D. dissertations. Dr. Sobh is active in consulting and providing service to many industrial organizations and companies. He has consulted for several companies in the U.S., Switzerland, India, Malaysia and Egypt, to support projects in robotics, automation, manufacturing, sensing, numerical analysis, and control. He has also worked at Philips Laboratories in New York, and a number of companies in Egypt.
Dr. Sobh has been awarded over 40 research grants to pursue his work in robotics, automation, manufacturing, and sensing. Dr. Sobh is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences and has received many awards and merits in recognition of his research and scholarly activities in engineering, education and computing and his services to the academic community. Dr. Sobh is a Licensed Professional Electrical Engineer (P.E.) in the State of Utah, a Certified Manufacturing Engineer (CMfgE) by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, a Certified Professional Manager (C.M.) by the Institute of Certified Professional Managers at James Madison University, a Certified Reliability Engineer (C.R.E.) by the American Society for Quality, a member of Tau Beta Pi (The Engineering Honor Society), Sigma Xi (The Scientific Research Society), Phi Beta Delta (The International Honor Society), Upsilon Pi Epsilon (The National Honor Society for the Computing Sciences, Phi Kappa Phi (The Academic Honor Society) and an honorary member of Delta Mu Delta (The National Honor Society for Business Administration).
Dr. Sobh is a member, senior member, founding or board member of several professional organizations including; ACM, IEEE, the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE), the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), the American Society of Quality (ASQ), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), the International Association of Online Engineering (IAOE), the Discovery Museum, the Connecticut Pre-Engineering Program (CPEP), the Northeast Center for Computers and Information Systems Security (NECCISS), the International E-Learning Association (IELA), and the Society for Industrial Computing. Dr. Sobh is a graduate of Victoria College, Alexandria, Egypt, in 1983 and a life member of the Old Victorians Association. He is also a life Member of the Egyptian Engineering Syndicate, a licensed engineer of the Egyptian Engineers Association and the Alexandria Engineering Organization.