Minister of State for Administrative Development

was born in Egypt in 1959. He received his B.Sc. in Electronics and Communication Engineering and M.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Cairo University, in 1981 and 1984 respectively.

He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Davis in 1988. During the academic year 1988/89, he was a lecturer and post-doctoral researcher with the Department of Electrical and Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Davis.

 In 1989, he joined Cairo University as an assistant professor, where later, he became an associate professor then a professor with the Computer Engineering Department in 1994 and 1999 respectively.

During the year 96/97 he was on sabbatical leave with the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Virginia Tech; He cooperated on several research projects with the Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group.

He received the Egyptian National Engineering Award for the year 1999. He is a member of few scientific and professional societies and on the editorial board and a reviewer for a number of publications. He shared in the design and development (and hold 50% of the IP) of 2 wireless simulation tools. He has over 64 publications in journals and scientific conferences, shared in 2 books, 11 invited talks and few sponsored research programs.

 
Dr. Darwish was a consultant to a number of international organizations (UNESCO, FAO, ESCWA, European Union and World Bank), government organizations and companies both in the United States and Egypt. During the last 3 years prior to becoming the Minister of State for Administrative Development he acted as the e-Government Program Director at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. He led the team to prepare the National Project Document on e-government and coordinate the implementation efforts.

 
Education

• Ph.D. (1988) in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Davis, USA.
• M.Sc. (1984) in Computer Engineering and B.Sc. (1981) in Electronics and Communications Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt.
   

Awards

• Egyptian National Engineering Award for the Year 1999.
   

Consultations

• Consultant to a number of Egyptian government bodies, agencies and companies, among them: Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, MENA (Middle East News Agency), Supreme Council of Antiquities, NWRC (National Water Research Center), MED (Mechanical and Electrical Department at the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources), TDA (Tourism Development Authority).
  
• Consultant to Bank du Caire and Bank of Alexandria.
  
• Consultant to three of the United Nations Organizations, UNESCO (Library Information System for Bibliotheca Alexandrina), FAO (Nutrient Database Project) and ESCWA (Information and Communications Technologies in Egyptian Enterprises).
  
• Consultant to a number of Egyptian and foreign companies and enterprises.

Employment History

• Sept '99 to July 2004: Professor, Computer Engineering Department, Cairo University.
  
• Sept. '94 - Sept '99: Associate Professor, Computer Engineering Department, Cairo University.
  
• Visiting Positions during this period include: The Bradley Department of Electrical Engineering, Virginia Tech, USA ('96-'97, Summer '99) and The Electrical Engineering Department, United Arab Emirates University, UAE (‘94-’96).
  
• Aug. '89 - Sept. '94: Assistant professor, Electronics and Communications Engineering Department, Cairo University.
  
• Visiting Positions during this period include: The Computer Science Department, American University, Cairo, Egypt and The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Davis, USA.
  
• April '88 - Aug. '89: Lecturer and Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Davis, USA.

Organizations

• Consultant to a number of Egyptian government bodies, agencies and companies, among them: Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, MENA (Middle East News Agency), Bank du Caire, Bank of Alexandria, Supreme Council of Antiquities, NWRC (National Water Research Center), MED (Mechanical and Electrical Department at the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources), TDA (Tourism Development Authority), Shaker Consultancy Group, PetroJet, Enppi (Engineering for the Petroleum and Process Industries), Mohandes Insurance Company, NTI (National Telecommunication Institute), T&S Trading, Egyptian Radio and TV Broadcasting, Pacer Information Systems, Egyptian Rail Road and others.
  
• Consultant to three of the United Nations Organizations, UNESCO (Library Information System for Bibliotheca Alexandrina), FAO (Nutrient Database Project) and ESCWA (Information and Communications Technologies in Egyptian Enterprises).
  
• Consultant to a number of the Bay area and Sacramento area companies in California, USA, among them the Infra Red Department at Loral, Fairchild Imaging Sensors, Milpitas and Optivision Inc., Davis.

Sample Projects

• 1997-2004: Consultant to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology for:
  o Planning and implementing the basis of the E-government initiative in Egypt.
  o Liaison officer (prepare RFP, evaluate bids and monitor) for US-AID Program for promotion of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in Egypt ($39.1M).
  o Setting up the human resource development program (professional training and continuous education for engineers). The program now runs in coordination with Cisco, Ericsson, Lucent, Nortel and Qualcomm.
  
• Prominat speaker in the area of eGovernmnet and Vision/Startegies for the future.
  o Participated in 3 think tank meetings: i. Liester, UK: Unesco Plan for WSIS (14 attendees from around the world), ii. Canne, France: Government in 2020 (17 attendees from arround the world) and iii. Alexandrai, Egypt: The future of Digital Libaries (11 attendees mostly from the US).
  o Invited speaker to eGovernment events: Johansburg (Dec. 2002), Manama (Oct. 2003), Kuwait (Dec. 2003), Cairo (Jan. 2004), Islamabad (Feb 2004), Rabat (Mar. 2004), Dubai (Apr. 2004).
  o Active participant in eGovernment events: Seatle (Apr. 2001), Paris (Feb 2002), Seatle (Apr 2002), London (June. 2002), Barcelona (Nov. 2002), Paris (Feb 2003), Rome (Spet. 2003).
  
• Consultant to the Bank of Alexandria helping to draft the new vision, policies and implementation strategies for the new image of the bank and to design the full LAN/WAN for all branches in Egypt.
  
• Consultant to Bank du Caire to: i. design and implement the full LAN/WAN for all 130 branches in Egypt along with voice over IP in addition to video surveillance at some branches, ii. replace/renovate 157 ATM machines and iii. deployment of a new full core and retail banking application in allbranches and the connection to a major data center.
  
• Consultant to UNESCO for the analysis, design and implementation of the library information system (hardware, software and network) of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
  
• Consultant to Middle East News Agency (MENA) on the modernization project for the archiving, network, video conferencing and Internet services.
  
• Consultant to Supreme Council of Antiquities to perform Process Analysis and workflow pertaining to Information Production, Storage and Dissemination for the Egyptian Antiquities Information System.
  
• Consultant to the Mechanical and Electrical Department at the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources for the modernization of the information system and maintenance system of pump stations all over Egypt (approx. 1600) – funded by World Bank.
  
• Consultant to the UN-ESCWA to prepare a study on Information and Communications Technologies in Egypt's Enterprises.
  
• Consultant to Shaker Group on Voice, Video and Data Networking aspects of their contracted projects (e.g. KPGM head quarters at Pyramids Height and City Star).
  
• Consultant to the National Water Research Center (NWRC) to design the distributed Geographical Information System and the network to be shared among all 12 institutes composing NWRC.
  
• Consultant to the Tourism Development Authority to write the RFP, evaluate proposals and technically assist in the start of the Nile Cruise Information and Safety Center. The project is funded from the World Bank for $20M and aims at installing a differential GPS system to guide cruises between Sohag and Aswan.
  
• Consultant to PetroJet to design and help acquire the new company network that links headquarters and all branches all over Egypt.
  
• Consultant to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to create and implement a food group database that consists of different elements and allows the analysis of recipes taking into consideration different factors such as water and vitamin loss ... etc.
  
• Consultant to Enppi (Engineering for the Petroleum and Process Industry) to upgrade the network and build an electronic document and engineering drawing archiving system.
  
• Analyzed and designed an electronic imaging archiving system for a leading news paper publisher in Cairo (under study and evaluation) and the document archiving system for the Egyptian Trade-Mark Office (Contract awarded).
  
• Analyzed, designed and shared the development (one of three partners holding the IP) of RSVP, a reconfigurable simulation video performance tool for studying video transmission over wireless channels and ATM networks.
  
• (Visit http://www.mprg.ee.vt.edu/research/rsvp/rsvp.html).
  
• Consultant to Telecom Egypt to prepare the RFP, assess and evaluate different proposals for the full automation of all activities (budget, finance, billing, inventory, ...). Bidders included, SAP, Baan, Oracle, RUSS and CAP.
  
• Consultant to the National Telecommunication Institute, helping in cell re-planning to solve the Cairo dead zone areas for cellular phones.
  
• Consultant for Mohandes Insurance Company, helping in testing the new upgraded company computer network.
  
• Consultant to Noran, an import and export company to analyze, design and supervise the implementation of a full financial system. The company has several warehouses and a small fleet to distribute goods to different customer locations.
  
  
• 1989-1996: Performed the complete system analysis, designed and supervised the implementation of several systems among them:
  o A management information system for the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources.
  o A complete computerized information system for the registrar and the office of student affairs at the Faculty of Engineering both at Cairo University and UAE University.
  o A computerized system for the central library of Cairo University.
  o A computerized system for the Arab league activities.
  o A complete network system for the Egyptian Rail Road Organization.
  
  
• 1991: Member of the committee for the upgrading of TV studios. Set the plans for new equipment purchases, evolving technologies and strategy to cope with it.
  
• 1990: Consultant to Optivision Inc., Davis, CA, in charge of the statistical analysis of some of the NASA multiband high resolution images (224 bands). The study involved the comparison of different compression techniques and special boards.
  
• 1989-1990: Designed and developed complete software package, "SIMPLE", for the simulation of digital communication systems. The package is capable of generating signals in different modulation format, processing them and graphically representing the expected results. SIMPLE works under UNIX, VMS or DOS and supports a large variety of graphical devices. It has been an important research tool at the University of California, Davis, Cairo University, Vagina Tech. and few companies.
  
• 1988-1989: Consultant to the Infra Red Department, Fairchild, Milpitas, CA, shared in the design of a complete image processing system for their IR cameras. Responsible for programming the boards and all the SW aspects of the project, in addition to the close contact with the hardware design team to assure the most efficient rewarding design.
  
• 1982-1984: Member of the University Industry Linkage Program, "Applications of Microcomputers in Spinning and Weaving Industry", Cairo University, California State University, Sacramento, and Misr Mehalla Spinning and Weaving Company. Designed an interactive menu driven graphics system that aids clothe pattern modeling and trim loss minimization.
  
• 1981-1983: Shlumberger Logelco Inc. Established and configured a Middle East based Card Repair Center to trouble shoot and repair the boards used in the well measurement system, and its peripherals. Failure statistics were reported to guide design modification.
  

Professional Development

• Analyzed, designed and shared the development (one of three partners holding the IP) of RSVP, a reconfigurable simulation video performance tool for studying video transmission over wireless channels and ATM networks. The package is in use by several universities, research centers and company R&D departments in Egypt and the USA.
  
• Analyzed, designed and supervised the development of the first Egyptian Nutrient database system. It is the first Arabic Latin system that confirms to all new international standards and takes into consideration both Langual and the new coding techniques that will be adopted shortly.
  
• Designed and developed complete software package, "SIMPLE", for the simulation of digital communication systems. The package is capable of generating signals in different modulation format, processing them and graphically representing the expected results. SIMPLE works under UNIX, VMS or DOS and supports a large variety of graphical devices. It has been an important research tool at the University of California, Davis, Cairo University, Vagina Tech. and few companies.
  

Scientific and professional societies

• Member of the Egyptian Society of Engineers (81-to date).
  
• Senior Member of IEEE (86-to date), the Computer Society, the Signal Processing Society and the Communications Society. Member of the IEEE executive committee for Egypt responsible for student membership development.
  
• Member of the ACM (98-to date).
  
• Member of the Inter-University Network (IUN), the Open Microsystems Initiative (OMI), the Technical Council on Software Engineering and IASTED technical committee on Robotics and Automation (88-94).
  
• Member of the Arab League Committee for the translation of Computer terms and the Egyptian Computer Society, SIG on Computer Linguistics and Arabization (89-92).
  

• Associate Editor of the International Journal of Robotics and Automation (90-94), Editorial Committee (95-2002).
  
• Reviewer and referee for IEEE Computer (88-to date), Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems (93-2002), International Journal of Parallel and Distributed Systems and Networks (97-2002), IEEE Trans. on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (99-2002), Scientific Bulletin, Cairo University (97-2004), Scientific Bulletin, Ain-Shams University (98-2004), Journal of the Faculty of Science, UAE (92-95), IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing (91-93), IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (89-91) and Journal of Optical Engineering (87-88).
  
• Acted on the program committee, helped organize, chaired sessions and technical review for several conferences; among them: IEEE Midwest 2003, Cairo, ICM 2003, Cairo, ICIT 2003 (Theme: Ensuring security in IT Structures), Cairo, IEEE MELECON 2002, IEEE SBC2002, IEEE GOLD2002, GLOBCOMM, Sydney, Australia, 1998, International Conference on Intelligent Applications in Communications and Power Systems, April 1997, IASTED International Conference on Robotics and Manufacturing, Oxford, England, Sept. 1993, ISMM International Conference on Applications of Mini & Micro Computers in Design, Simulation and Analysis, Las Vegas, Mar. 1991.