Tarek El-Bawab was most recently Dean of the School of Engineering at the American University of Nigeria. Before this, he was Dean of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Nile University (Egypt), Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Jackson State University (USA), and Project Manager with the Network Strategy Group of Alcatel USA (now Nokia). Before these positions, he assumed leading research roles with Alcatel (Alcatel-Lucent, now Nokia), Colorado State University, and University of Essex (UK). His research interests include telecommunications, network architectures, optical networks, wireless networks, performance analysis, and Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER). He has more than 80 scholarly papers and patents. His book Optical Switching is one of the most comprehensive references in its subject. He is an IEEE Fellow, Series Editor of Springer’s Textbooks in Telecommunication and Network Engineering, the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Communications Magazine (2017-2021), IEEE Distinguished Lecturer (2016-2019), and NSF Review Panelist.

Tarek led the Telecommunication Engineering Education movement (2008-2014), resulting in recognition of network/telecommunication engineering as distinct ABET-accreditable discipline. He is the first recipient of the IEEE Communications Society’s Education Award for this work. He was elected twice as the society’s Chair of the Transmission, Access, and Optical Systems Technical Committee. Tarek has served as symposium chair, workshops Chair, and organizer in several ICC/Globecom Conferences, and organized/chaired the International Workshop on Optical Networking Technologies thereto for 10 years. He has B.Sc. in electrical engineering and B.A. in history from Ain Shams University (Egypt), M.Sc. in solid state science from the American University in Cairo, M.Sc. in telecommunications and information systems from University of Essex (UK), and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Colorado State University.