Faculty Highlight: Dr. Issam Damaj

AUK Assistant Professor and Program Lead of Computer Engineering Dr. Isaam Damaj attended The 2011 IEEE GCC Conference and Exhibition for Sustainable Ubiquitous Technology in Dubai on February 19-22. The conference provided a forum for professional engineers, scientists and academicians engaged in research and development to convene and present their latest scholarly work and applications in industry. It also provided engineers with an opportunity to interact and share their experiences in technology applications, new developments in industry and their benefits to the GCC countries. 

Dr. Damaj presented two papers at the conference; the first was a technical paper on the "Sustainability of Engineering Education in the Gulf Cooperation Council Region". The presented research was done in collaboration with the American University of Beirut. Based on the challenges facing the institution of sustainable engineering education in the GCC region, the paper presented an exploratory investigation to determine what could be learned by studying an existing model of collaboration between a well-established University (The American University of Beirut) and a newly-established one (Dhofar University, Salalah, Oman) that included the creation of engineering programs. The study also investigated what could be learned from the practices of the newly-established University in terms of sustainability. The investigation built on an internal University-wide self-study and an external review by a formal accreditation council. In addition, the investigation critically presented good practices within the College of Engineering and at the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. 

The second investigation presented by Dr. Damaj was a technical paper on the "The Design and Implementation of Electrically Small Reconfigurable Patch Antennas". The presented research is done in collaboration with Beirut Arab University and addressed the need for smaller, power efficient, and electrically small wireless devices. The paper focused on key characteristics of future generation wireless communication systems that include the ability of antenna reconfiguration to meet different standards. The paper presented the design and implementation of electrically small reconfigurable patch antennas. Different designs were developed and simulated and the designed antennas were fabricated and tested. The performance of the fabricated antennas was critically evaluated and analyzed. 

Dr. Damaj also chaired a session on "Engineering Education" and served as a member of the Technical Program Committee of the conference.