5. Professional Leadership

5.1- Professional Organizations Leadership

  • Member of the IEEE (since 1991), and the IEAust (Institute of Engineers of Australia 1993-1997), the Planetary Society, and the Australian Pattern Recognition Society, APRS (since 1996).
  • Feb. 2000-Present: Elected President, Australian Pattern Recognition Society, Qld Branch.
  • Jan. 99- Present: Elected Vice-Chair, IEEE Queensland Section. The IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional society. The society has 320 000+ members participating in activities in about 150 countries. The institute focuses on advancing electrical-, electronic-, and computer- engineering, and computer science; it also aims to improve public understanding of technological applications and to advance the standing of the engineering profession.
  • Jan. 98-Dec. 98: Elected Treasurer, IEEE Queensland Section.
  • Jan. 97-Dec. 97: Elected Treasurer, IEEE Queensland Section.

5.2- Leadership in Symposia & Workshops

 Conference Organization

  • Program Director, IMAGE 2001, the International Symposium on Photonics Technology & Applications, University of Queensland, St Lucia campus, 27-28 September 2001.
  • Technical Chairman, Workshop on Signal Processing Applications (WoSPA'2000), Brisbane, Queensland, 14-15 Dec. 2000.
  • Program Committee member, Workshop on Stereo Image and Video Processing (WSIVP'2000), Sydney, Australia, 8 December 2000.
  • Invited to be a member of the International Advisory Committee (IAC), IEEE TENCON’99 conference, Cheju, Korea, 15-17 September 1999.
  • Chairman, Publications Committee, Region 10, IEEE TENCON’97 International Conference, held in Brisbane in December 1997.
  • Member of the Technical Committee, Region 10, IEEE TENCON’97, Brisbane, Australia, December 1997. Duties: Review submitted abstracts to the conference and recommend their acceptance or rejection to the Technical Chair of the conference.
  • Webmaster, IEEE TENCON 97 (http://www.eese.qut.edu.au/~mbennamo)
  • Chairman, Publications Committee, International Symposium on Signal Processing and Its Applications, ISSPA’96, held on the Gold Coast, August 1996.  300 delegates.


Organization of “Invited Sessions” and
Focus Symposiums” at Conferences

  • Organized an “invited session”, on “Image Processing and its Applications” at the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC’98, held in San Diego, California, Oct. 98.


Responsibility: Invite experts in the area of Image Processing and organize the session. I was able to attract eight eminent researchers from different respected institutions of the world such as the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Rockwell International.

  • Invited to give a tutorial, “Automatic Vision Systems: Theory and Applications”, SCI'97 World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, Caracas, Venezuela, July 7-11, 1997.
  • Invited to organize a “Focus Symposium” on Image Processing, at the SCI'97, World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, Caracas, Venezuela, July 7-11, 1997.


  Responsibility: Prepare the “Call for Papers”, advertise, collect and review the papers.

  • Invited to organize an “Invited Session” on Image Processing at the International Conference on Information, Systems, Analysis and Synthesis (ISAS 96), Florida, USA, July 1996.


Responsibility: Invite experts in the area of Image Processing and organize the session.

  • Organization Co-Chair of a three days Workshop on “Robot Vision”, following the International Symposium on Signal Processing and Its Applications, ISSPA’96 held on the Gold Coast, Australia, August 1996.  My role was to organize the workshop and invite top keynote speakers (such as Prof. K. Youcef-Toumi from MIT) in the areas of Robotics and Robot Vision.

Others:

  • Invited Prof. N. Ayache, from INRIA, France to give a seminar at QUT on Medical Image Analysis. The seminar was organized through the IEEE Qld. Section in 1998.

 Session Chair at Conferences

  • Invited to chair two technical sessions at the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, SMC’99, Tokyo, Japan, October 12-15, 1999.
  • Invited to chair a technical session on Image Processing at IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, SMC’98, San Diego, California, USA October 11-14, 1998.
  • Session Chair of a technical session (invited), “Image Processing and Noise Reduction”, at the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, IEEE SMC’97, Orlando, Florida, Oct 11-14, 1997. I was awarded a Certificate for valuable contribution at this conference.
  • Invited to chair a technical session at the IEEE Region 10 Conference, TENCON’97, Brisbane, Australia, December. 2-4, 1997.
  • Invited to chair a session on Image Processing at the International Conference on Information, Systems, Analysis and Synthesis (ISAS 96), Florida, USA, July 1996.

5.3- Referee for Journals

5.4- Professional Practice

  • May 95- Jan.2000: General Coordinator and Assistant Point of Contact to the Australian Affiliate Campus of the International  Space University (ISU).

 The Australian Affiliate Campus consists of five universities and many Australian organizations, such as the Australian Space Office (ASO), CSIRO, etc.
Our objective was to collaborate with ISU in terms of teaching, and space research. The role of the affiliate campus is to develop Space Research in Australia, and send Australian candidates to the ISU Summer or Masters programs.  It is our role also to provide financial assistantship to the participants in these programs.

ISU is an international University, with more than 18 contributing countries, including Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the USA.  Each country has a campus, such as the Australian Affiliate Campus, which is composed of many universities and Space Organizations. Among the renowned participating organizations: Canadian Space Agency, Spar Aerospace Ltd., Canadian Department of National Defence, France Aerospatial (designers of Arianne launchers), CNES (French Space Agency), DARA (German Space Agency), NASDA, Matra Marconi Space Group (UK), Arthur C. Clarke Foundation, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), USA, NASA, etc.

ISU has two activities, the ISU summer program, which runs every year in one of the member countries, and the Masters of Space Studies.  Note that the chancellor of ISU is the eminent fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.


Professional Development Program (PDP) Leave


Multi-disciplinary Studies and Research in Space Systems Architecture and Mission Design, Space Business and Management, Space Engineering, Life Sciences, Satellite Applications, Space Policy and Law, Space Resources, Robotics and Manufacturing, Space Physical Sciences, Humanities and a Program in Informatics.  I represented Australia in this program.

Awards

  • International Space University (ISU) Grant to attend the summer program in Barcelona (Professional Development Program), Spain, 1994, US $6000. ISU selected only two participants, from a large pool of candidates, to represent Australia.
  • Space Centre for Satellite Navigation (I joined this Centre in Jan. 1997) Award to participate at the International Space University Summer Program in Barcelona, Spain, 1994, AU $3000.
  • ATERB award to attend the IEEE ANZIIS-93 conference in Perth, Dec. 1993.

5.5- Consulting/Research Contracts

Reviewed Ph.D. Theses on a regular basis for QUT and the University of Adelaide. Example “Edge Detection and Enhancement Using Shunting Inhibitory Cellular Neural Networks”, by Carmine Pontecorvo, University of Adelaide.


The Neocognitron, which is an Artificial Neural Network model of the Human Visual System, was investigated and improved. Applications in the area of Automatic Target Recognition were demonstrated. This work resulted in many refereed conference papers, and two technical reports submitted to DSTO at the end of the contract (see publications T4 and T5).

5.6- Community Service and Other Professional Involvement

  • Jan. -May 94: Supervised a student from the Migrant Professionals Program.
  • Oct. 90-Present: Member of the Queen’s Cha Gheill Society, Canada, a Queen’s Alumni Society.
  • Jan. 89-Present: Contributed in the Electrical Engineering Orientation Evenings at QUT, and at Queen’s.
  • Jan. 94-Jan. 97: Floor Fire Warden, ITE Building, QUT.
  • May 1995: Fire Training Course, Chubb Fire Training and Education.
  • Dec. 1996: Qualified in Resuscitation, St John Ambulance, Queensland.

5.7- Attended Conferences, Technical Programs and Workshops

I attended the following conferences over the years: IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, (ICASSP), which is the most prestigious conference in the area of signal Processing, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (IEEE, ICIP), which is the most prestigious conference in Image Processing. Other Conferences include The International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), which is the most prestigious conference in Pattern Recognition, IEEE SMC, DICTA, WOSPA, IEEE ANZIIS, VSPC, and the International Conference on Intelligent Control and many more.

 I also attend top quality technical programs in my area of research to update my technical knowledge. Examples include:

  •  July 2000: Prof. E. Delp, Purdue University, IEEE Distinguished Lecture Series (I also participated in the organization of these lectures).
  • Dec. 1998: A one day workshop organized by IEEE Qld., “Neural Networks” by Prof. S. Haykin, McMaster University, Canada. Prof. Haykin is famous in this area and has a famous book on this topic.
  • July 1995: Four days Tutorial organized by IEEE Qld., “Statistical Signal Processing”, by Prof. C. Therrien, Naval Postgraduate School, USA.  Prof. Therrien wrote a book in the area.

 

Last updated 9 January 2002
CRICOS No 00126G