KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Dr. Ahmed N. Tantawy
Egypt National Nanotechnology Center, Egypt

Biography of the Keynote Speaker

Dr. Ahmed N. Tantawy is currently the Director of Egypt’s National Nanotechnology Initiative. His mission is to establish a sustainable ecosystem that would enable the country to accelerate its economic growth through the advancement and use of emerging nanotechnology.
Until October 2009, Dr. Tantawy was the Chief Technical Officer of IBM in the area of Growth Markets, where he oversaw the technical aspects of a number of novel and complex projects in Africa, Asia, Australia, Central & Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
As the Technical Director of IBM in the Middle East and North Africa from 2000 to 2008, he championed numerous initiatives, particularly the establishment of the IBM Technology Development Center in Cairo, Egypt. There, he built a team of 500 engineers and scientists and led them to produce over 25 inventions per year while developing products and applications for various IBM divisions and customers on all continents. The center is among the very small, exclusive group of organizations that have achieved CMMI Level 5 certification.
From 1998 to 2000, Dr. Tantawy was the Director of Advanced Technology Development for IBM’s Software Group in the USA. Among other activities, he managed the invention and development of secure management and distribution techniques for electronic media assets over the Internet and digital broadcast networks, with proper content protection and digital rights management.
As the Worldwide Director of Digital Video Technology in 1996 and 1997, he was responsible for the development of IBM hardware and software products and solutions for various digital media applications.
From 1988 to 1995, he was a Research Scientist then Manager of the Multimedia Communication Systems department at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. There, he initiated and led several projects in the areas of high bandwidth networks, interactive multimedia systems, autonomous decentralized systems, and high performance workstations.
Between 1980 and 1988, Dr. Tantawy was a University Professor and an independent consultant in the USA, France, and the Middle East. He led several funded research projects in the areas of Factory Automation, National Health Information Infrastructure, and Satellite Data Networks. He also played a significant role in the establishment of the first College of Computing in Saudi Arabia.
His scientific contributions include 18 issued patents, 4 books and over 100 refereed papers. He serves on the Board of Trustees and Advisory Boards of a number of universities and research institutes in the USA, Europe, and the Middle East. He had special assignments with the US National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He also served as Editor-in-Chief of a book series on High Performance Computing and Communications, Editor of 4 scientific journals, and General Chair of 14 international conferences.
Dr. Tantawy received his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering with highest honors in 1980 from Grenoble, France. Alexandria University, Egypt, granted him the B.Eng. And M.S. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering with distinction and highest honors in 1973 and 1976, respectively.