Obituary
Remembering an IEEE Pioneer : Mohamed Kamel
The pattern recognition and intelligent systems community mourns the passing of one of its pioneers and leading researchers, the late Dr. Mohamed Kamel, a University Research Chair Professor in Cooperative Intelligent Systems at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Kamel passed peacefully the evening of December 4, 2015. Dr. Kamel joined the faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo in 1985. Since 2004, he was affiliated with the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as Canada Research Chair and later as University Research Chair professor. He retired in the summer of 2015 and was named Professor Emeritus.
Professor Kamel has been a pioneer in the fields of pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems. His contributions to the practice, research and education in these fields have been truly remarkable and outstanding. They earned him international recognition and honors including: Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Life IEEE fellow, EIC fellow, CAE fellow, IAPR fellow, IEEE Canada McNaughton Award, membership of editorial boards of international journals and several best paper awards.
Dr. Kamel's work, publications and professional activities have benefited and influenced faculty members and students in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Systems Design Engineering and Computer Science Departments. His graduates (more than 90 PhD and M.Sc candidates) are successful professional and making excellent contributions in academia and industry throughout the world.
Dr. Kamel has cooperated with many professors from many departments at the University and was a co-founding member of the Center for Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (CPAMI), which he directed till his passing. Dr. Kamel was very collegial, cooperative, supportive of others and has mentored several junior faculty members. He has also cooperated with many researchers around the globe such as in the US, Portugal, Egypt, Hong Kong, to name a few..
In 1986, Kamel co-founded Virtek Vision International with Tom King, Andrew Wong and Bob Nally. Virtek commercialized research developed in the Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Laboratory and was acquired by Gerber Technology in 2008. Professor Kamel served on its board and as Chair of Virtek's Technology Advisory Group.
He will be sorely missed by his former students, colleagues at the University and friends from around the world and by the research community at large. The passing of Dr. Kamel is a major loss to all those who have known him and to the global scientific community. A memorial event will be held at the University of Waterloo to honor the life and achievements of Dr. Mohamed Kamel
Contributed by: Fakhri Karray, University Research Chair Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo
