The IEEE Industrial Electronics Society has announced the 2023 recipients of the society’s awards! Congratulations to them!
IES would also like to express great appreciations to the IES Awards & Honors Committee chaired by Hiromasa Haneda.

Dr.-Ing. Eugene Mittelmann Achievement Award

Recipient: Yang Shi

University of Victoria, Canada

Citation: For outstanding contributions to networked and distributed control, model predictive control, industrial cyber-physical systems and mechatronics applications.

Prof. Yang Shi received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in the School of Marine Science and Technology from Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China, in 1994 and 1998, respectively, and the second Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, in 2005. From 2005 to 2009, he was an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada. In 2009, he joined the University of Victoria, and now he is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Victoria (UVic), Victoria, BC, Canada. His current research interests include networked and distributed systems, model predictive control (MPC), cyber-physical systems (CPS), robotics and mechatronics, navigation and control of autonomous systems (AUV and UAV), and energy system applications. He has published over 250 journal articles and 4 books. Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thomas Reuters) has named him Highly Cited Researcher every year between 2014-2022.

As an outstanding educator, Prof. Shi received the University of Saskatchewan Student Union Teaching Excellence Award in 2007, and the Faculty of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award in 2012 at UVic. His research has been recognized by many awards: the JSPS Invitation Fellowship (short-term) in 2013, the UVic Craigdarroch Medal for Excellence in Research in 2015, the 2017 IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems Outstanding Paper Award, the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers in 2018, the CSME Mechatronics Medal in 2023. Prof. Shi is a passionate volunteer in professional societies. He is currently a Council Member of International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). He serves as Vice-President on Conference Activities of IEEE IES (2022-2023) and the Chair of IES Technical Committee on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (2018-2022). He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (2018-2023); he also serves as Associate Editor for Automatica, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, etc.
Prof. Shi is a Fellow of IEEE, ASME, CSME, Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE). He is a registered Professional Engineer in British Columbia, Canada.

Anthony J. Hornfeck Service Award

Recipient 1/2: Lucia Lo Bello 

University of Catania, Italy

Citation: For outstanding and meticulous service to IES organization and to IES members.

Prof. Lucia Lo Bello received the Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering in 1998 and is a tenured Professor at the University of Catania, Italy. She was a Guest Professor with the University of Mälardalen, Sweden (2014) and a Visiting Researcher at the Seoul National University, South Korea (2000-2001).

Prof. Lo Bello joined IEEE in 2001, became Senior Member in 2009 and is an active volunteer of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES). She received the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society 2008 Early Career Award “For outstanding performance in teaching, research and public service”. She has been the IES Secretary for two terms since 2020. She is the current Chair of the IES Subcommittee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) of the Membership Committee (2023). Prof. Lo Bello was the IES Representative in IEEE Women in Engineering for 5 years (2017-2022) and founded and led the “Women in IES” initiative under the Growth Center project. In this role, Prof. Lo Bello organized and chaired 15 Women in IES Forums and Workshops at the main IEEE Conferences to inspire women and foster their involvement in Engineering. She also ran the regular Women in IES Column of the Industrial Electronics Magazine and organized focused meetings and public events to foster the girls’ involvement in STEM disciplines, with a focus on Engineering.

Prof. Lo Bello is IES Senior AdCom Member since 2022. She was the Chair of the IES Technical Committee on Factory Automation (TCFA) for two terms. She is the Chair of the SubCommittee FA7 – “In-Vehicle Embedded Systems”. She is Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics and of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine. Prof. Lo Bello regularly serves on the Technical Program Committee of several IEEE Conferences (ETFA, WFCS, INDIN, etc). She was Program Chair of ISIE 2023, ISIE 2022, INDIN 2021, INDIN 2019, ETFA 2020, IECON 2016, ICPS 2018, WFCS 2016, HSI 2009, ETFA 2008, ETFA 2005. Prof. Lo Bello also served as General Chair for ETFA 202, ETFA 2019, ETFA 2018.

Prof. Lo Bello has 29+ years of research experience in the areas of real-time embedded systems, industrial and automotive communications. She authored more than 200 technical papers and one granted US patent. She is actively involved in national and international standardization bodies in the industrial communications area. Prof. Lo Bello is the PI for the University of Catania of several national projects, of international projects funded by the European Commission, and of several research grants funded by national and international companies. She received the 2021 IEEE Rudolf Chope Research & Development Award “For her outstanding contributions to research and development of traffic scheduling and network management techniques to support real-time communications in Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks”.

Recipient 2/2: Yousef Ibrahim

Federation University Australia, Australia

Citation: For outstanding services to promote IES membership and conferences.

Prof. Yousef Ibrahim (F.I.E.Aust., SMIEEE), B.SC, M.Tech, PhD, has an academic and leadership experience extends over 28 years. He was the Sub-program leader, Mechatronics, of AusAID program to the Royal Thai Government for the establishment of 6 Mechatronics programs in 6 Thai Universities. He was also initiator and founder of Monash’s Mechatronics Program. More recently he established another Mechatronics program for Federation University Australia with AU$2.7 million grant from the State Government and an Industrial Consortium. He also established, under Monash University, the Gippsland Regional Automation Centre (GRACe) with $1M grant, for automation and Mechatronics applications in regional industry.

He was appointed by Australian Research Council (ARC) as a “Reviewer of International Standing” for ARC competitive grants and recently as a performance reviewer of ARC-funded research centres. He had been invited Senior Academic at University of Bristol, UK and invited Professor at Poitiers University, France. He has been on the ministerial advisory council to the Minister of Innovation for five consecutive terms (10 years) serving successions of State Governments. Yousef has been a Guest Editor of IEEE-IES publications (TIE, TII and IEM) and led many successful IEEE-IES International Conferences. He was inducted by the Governor of Victoria as an Honorary Ambassador of Melbourne.

From 2011 to 2013, Prof. Yousef Ibrahim has served the Society as the Vice-president for Workshops. Through his service he liaised with the IEEE conference committee for the establishment of IEEE policy on Technically Sponsored conferences. This policy is in force to date. From 2014 to 2015 he continued to serve the society as Vice-President for Conferences.

From 2017 to 2022 Prof. Ibrahim served the society as vice-president membership. The society’s membership rapidly grew during his service from 6,839 and hit the 10,000-milestone membership for the first time in its 70-year history.  Also, Prof. Ibrahim successfully grew the IES chapters/joint-chapters from 60 Chapters in 2017 to 102 Chapters in 2022 with a rapid growth of 70%.  Furthermore, through his dedicated service Prof. Ibrahim managed to grow the IES’ Student Branch Chapters (SBCs) from 11 SBCs in 2017 to 59 SBCs in 2022 (436% growth in IES’ SBCs).  In order to make the society more recognizable for non-members; Prof. Ibrahim initiated the modification of the Society’s logo to incorporate the Society’s full name which was approved by AdCom and IEEE’s HQ. Also, to further support the Chapters local activities, the support to chapter local activities’ budget was increased from $25k/a to $100k/a.

Furthermore, and in collaboration with the Award and Honours committee, he initiated best Student Branch Chapter (SBC) award. This award was approved by TAB and presented for the first time last year. He also established the SBC Support Scheme for SBC local activities. Due to the rapid growth of IES membership, the society was invited in 2021 to present its membership growth experience to the IEEE’s Societies presidents meeting.

In addition, Prof. Ibrahim has served as a General Chair/Co-chair for the following IES International Conferences: INDIN 2022 (Australia), ICIT 2019 (Australia), ICIT 2018 (France), ICM 2017 (Australia), IECON 2016 (Italy), INDIN 2016 (France), ICIT 2016 (Taiwan), ICIT 2015 (Spain), ICIT 2013 (South Africa), ICIT 2009 (Australia).

In addition, he served as a Technical Program Co-Chair for the following IEEE conferences: ICIT 2022 (China), ISIE 2018 (Australia), ICIT 2012 (Greece), IECON 2011 (Australia). He also organized Special sessions on Mechatronics in eight IEEE-IES International Conferences.

Prof. Yousef Ibrahim’s main research areas are in Mechatronics and Robotics.

IEEE Bimal Bose Award for Industrial Electronics Applications in Energy Systems

Recipient: Hadi Youssef Kanaan

Saint-Joseph University of Beirut, Lebanon

Citation: For significant contribution to the modeling and the control of power electronics converters.

Prof. Hadi Y. Kanaan (S’99-M’02-SM’06) received the diploma in electromechanical engineering from Saint-Joseph University of Beirut (USJ), the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Ecole de Technologie Supérieure (ETS), Montreal, Canada, and the Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) from the Université de Cergy-Pontoise, Paris, France, in 1991, 2002 and 2009 respectively. He is currently a Full-Professor, Head of the Department of Graduate Studies at Ecole Supérieure d’Ingénieurs de Beyrouth (ESIB) and Director of the Doctoral School of Sciences, Engineering and Technology at USJ, which he joined in 2001, and executive member of the USJ Research and Technology Transfer Office since 2019. He is also an Adjunct Professor at ETS, Canada, since 2021, and associate member of the Canada Research Chair in Energy Conversion and Power Electronics since 2001.

Prof. Kanaan’s research interests concern modeling and control of switch-mode converters, modern rectifiers, power factor correction, active power filters, and grid-connectivity of renewable energy systems. He is an author of 1 book, 3 book chapters, 1 patent and more than 270 technical papers published in international journals and conferences. He served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions Industrial Electronics, and is currently an Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics on Industrial Electronics (JESTIE). He is an AdCom member-at-large of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES), chair of the IEEE Lebanon Section, and member of the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS), the IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS), the IEEE Education Society, the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal Committee, and the IEEE Eta-Kappa-Nu (HKN) honor society.

IEEE J. David Irwin Early Career Award

Recipient: Giampaolo Buticchi

The University of Nottingham Ningbo China, China

Citation: For outstanding contributions to power electronics for renewable energy systems and green transportation.

Prof. Giampaolo Buticchi received the master’s degree in electronic engineering in 2009 and the Ph.D degree in Information Technologies in 2013 from the University of Parma, Italy. Between 2014 and 2017, he was a post-doctoral researcher and Guest Professor at the University of Kiel, Germany. He is now Professor in Electrical Engineering at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.

Prof. Buticchi’s research focuses on power electronics for renewable energy systems, smart transformer fed micro-grids and dc grids for the More Electric Aircraft. He is author/co-author of more than 300 international peer-review journal or conference articles; he is the recipient of the Von Humboldt Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers in 2014 and of three IEEE Journal best paper awards. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics and of the IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society. He is the past Chair of the IEEE-IES Technical Committee on Renewable Energy System.

IEEE IES Best Chapter Award

Egypt IES Chapter

Citation: For recognition of Outstanding Chapter Activity in 2022

IEEE IES Best Student Branch Chapter Award

Technical University of Kenya

Citation: For recognition of Outstanding Student Branch Chapter Activity in 2022