Leader Under 40: Wael Badawy

President, IntelliView Technologies Inc. – MS + PhD Computer Engineering, University of Louisiana; BS + MS Computer Science + Automatic Control Engineering, University of Alexandria

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Wael Badawy, PhD, 38

President, IntelliView Technologies Inc., www.intelliview.ca

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Academics

MS + PhD Computer Engineering, University of Louisiana; BS + MS Computer Science + Automatic Control Engineering, University of Alexandria

Achievements

Badawy develops video technology after an academic career and now leads a technology-based company, IntelliView Technologies Inc. Badawy remains focused on research, serving on several standard boards, representing Canada in hundreds of technical meetings and research in video processing and its use in control engineering. In 2008, he was a co-author to the international video standard known as MPEG4/H.264. He also received a national award (Award of Excellence) for these contributions from the Standards Council of Canada Leadership in Review:

• 1998: Video Processing Technology developed at the University of Louisiana
• 2001: IntelliView’s software solution incubated at the University of Calgary
• 2003: Spin-off from the University of Calgary with a computer vision technology
• 2004 - 2006: Developed the first product as a software for video analysis
• 2007 - 2008: Branding, three patents filed, bought the technology from University of Calgary
• 2009: Raised $3 million and shifted the company; two patents issued
• 2010: Relocated to an office adjacent to Deerfoot Trail and erected large signage.

Other awards include:

• Microsoft Canadian Innovation Program - Immigrants of Distinction Distinguished Professional Alberta Finalist
• Manning Innovation Awards
• Standards Council of Canada (SCC) Awards - Award of Excellence
• Avenue Magazine - Top 40 Under 40.

Badawy’s personal contributions:

1. More than 400 of Badawy’s papers and presentations have been accepted for publication by the internal peer community.
The 50+ contributions to develop the ISO standards, which represent more than 75% of the hardware reference model for the H.264 compression standard. He was also the co-editor for the standards.
2. The commercialization of a Canadian Video technology through IntelliView Technologies Inc.
3. Training, knowledge, and technology that Dr. Badawy transferred over the last 10 years to his students (about 2,000 undergraduate and 50 graduate) who are now contributing to the engineering field at different capacities including design, teaching, supervising, and manufacturing several electronic components.
4. Named on at least nine patents applications including four as sole inventor.
5. Organized and participated in more than 30 international and national technical meetings including ISO/IEC/JTC1.

Badawy has demonstrated a video-coding framework that provides new concepts, algorithms, and architectures for coding and decoding video sequences. The framework is said to outperform current MPEG-2 video standards and the new MPEG-4 standards in required bandwidth, quality of the transmitted video sequences, and the required computational power. It allows transmission of video sequence for limited bandwidth and limited power consumption applications, such as wireless applications. The proposed framework was awarded the Microlyne Microsystems Design Award (previously the Alberta Microelectronic Corporation Award) on June 7, 2001, at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. The Microlyne Microsystems Design Award is awarded to researchers in a Canadian university who demonstrate the most novel and industrially relevant research results in MEMS Microsystems Materials research or system-related developments. Badawy is collaborating in research and development with CMC, Genumm, and Teledyne Dalsa.

Non-work-related activity

Badawy plays and coaches soccer, tennis, and chess, and he enjoys working with children on different activities.

Engineering-related activity

Badawy mentors young engineers through the Canadian Youth Business Foundation. He believes that helping and teaching the youth is a great contribution to society.

Interesting details

Leadership skills and visions are said to motivate his colleagues, employees, and researchers toward excellence. He shows that dreams come true through passion and dedication.

Began interest

“Since 1990, when I saw the textile automation process in a family-owned factory, I have been interested in the automated color extraction and mixing technology that was bought over from Germany at the time,” Badawy said.

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