Dr. Tarek Mohamed Kamel is the Minister of Communications and Information Technology in Prime Minister’s Dr. Ahmed Nazif Cabinet as well as the Chairman of the National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA), the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), the National Telecommunication Institute (NTI) and the Information Technology Institute’s (ITI) Board of Trustees.

Dr. Tarek Kamel was Senior Advisor to the Minister of Communications and Information Technology for five years before being appointed Minister. During that time he spearheaded a number of national initiatives to increase the use of ICT tools across various segments of Egyptian society. Currently, the Minister is known for his visionary strategy to drive Public Private Partnership initiatives to develop Egypt's ICT sector, leading Egypt into the global Information Society.

Dr. Kamel is a recognized authority on the Internet and is frequently called upon to address various international events dedicated to debating its future. In October 2006, he was keynote speaker at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held in Athens, Greece. The Minister has led many initiatives to increase Internet and broadband penetration in Egypt, Africa and the Arab world. Over the last several years, he has been the main proponent of Egypt's initiatives to reform and deregulate the telecommunications sector, which is the highest growth field domestically and one of the fastest growing in the region. Dr. Kamel has also directed the efforts of IT stakeholders on new initiatives for using ICT for Development, such as the Egyptian Education Initiative (EEI), as well as Egypt’s Health Initiative as part of the global health initiative.

Since 2004, Dr. Kamel has acted as Chairman of the Executive Bureau of the Arab Telecommunications and Information Council of Ministers. He is also the Chairman of the Ministerial Conference on Communication and Information Technologies of the African Union (2006-2008). In recognition of his leadership in the sector, in 2005 the South African Ministry of Communications named him “Top Minister in Africa with an ICT Portfolio”.

Dr. Kamel began his career as a networks support engineer at the Academy of Technology and Scientific Research after receiving an Engineering degree from Cairo University in 1985. He then swiftly moved to becoming an assistant researcher at the Electronics Research Institute before being granted a fellowship for PhD studies from the German Academic Exchange (DAAD) for the period 1989 to 1992. Awarded a Doctorate in Computer Networking from Munich Technical University in 1992, he was then appointed manager of the Communications and Networking Department at the Egyptian Cabinet Information and Decision Support Centre (IDSC/RITSEC). During this time he was also named Secretary of the Egyptian Internet Society and a professor of Computer Networks at the Electronics Research Institute. In May 1999, Dr. Kamel became Vice-President of these two organizations, and three years later a Trustee of the Internet Society (ISOC), Virginia, U.S.A. Dr Kamel was a member of the Board of Telecom Egypt from 2000 to 2004 where he played a pivotal role in the company’s development.

On December 10th 2007, Dr. Hazem Y. Abdelazim was appointed as the CEO of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) after serving as the Minister’s senior advisor for the technology development sector since May 2007.

Dr. Abdelazim’s professional experience is a blend of industry and academia. He is currently an associate professor of information technology at the faculty of computer and information science at Cairo University.

Dr. Abdelazim has been recognized for his achievements by being awarded the first scientific innovation prize for Arab scientists (1993), President’s excellence and encouragement award [Egypt] (1992 and 1995), and student of the year and director’s cup (2003) from the Maastricht School of Management.

He is also continually contributing to technical journals and presenting papers at international conferences, such as the International Journal of Financial Management, in the field of artificial intelligence and soft computing.

Within the world of academia, he has become renowned for his teaching and research in the fields of pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, Arabic NLP, and applications of soft computing in financial trading of securities. He also holds a professional certificate for technical analysis of stock markets.

Dr. Abdelazim graduated in Systems Engineering from Cairo University in 1982, with highest honors. He completed his MSc in Applied Mathematics in 1985, and then attained his PhD in Applied Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence in 1989, both from Cairo University.

In 2003, Dr. Abdelazim completed his MBA from the Maastricht School of Management in The Netherlands with distinction.
From 1982 to 1986, Dr. Abdelazim held the position of teaching assistant at the Department of Systems and Biomedical Engineering at Cairo University, before returning in 1993 to take his current position at the university.

Additionally, Dr. Abdelazim was visiting professor for the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the UAE University, Al Ain between 1994 and 1995, teaching in his specialized field.

As an assistant scientist, and then associate scientist for the IBM Research Center, Dr. Abdelazim began research work during the period between 1986 and 1992 in Arabic Natural Language Processing, where he is considered one of the pioneers in Arabic Optical Character Recognition technology and jointly filed a US Patent with IBM.

He was awarded an ‘invention achievement award’ from IBM in 1991 in recognition of his significant contribution to society.

Between 1995 and 1996, Dr. Abdelazim headed a team of scientists and researchers in Sakhr Software, a leading research and development company in the Middle East.

He was a chief scientist for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) development. From 1996 to 1997, he acted as senior project coordinator for internet development leading the company into the internet business. He was then appointed the position of executive director, which he held until 2000.

His work involved supervising all research and development activities and heading the company to new business fronts.

In 2001, Dr. Abdelazim was the entrepreneur and co-founder of IMAGiNET Software (now CIT MOBiDIV), one of the world’s top players in Arabic technologies on Microsoft Windows mobile devices.

He headed a team of research engineers towards developing a new invention for handwriting messaging over SMS Protocol, which was recently being filed as an International Patent. The company’s success has attracted a reputable portfolio of multinational clients, including Samsung, Motorola, hp, HTC, imate, and ASUS.

Dr. El-Sadany has over 23 years of experience in the high-tech industry, while holding numerous executive management and leadership positions. He is currently the Senior Advisor to the Minister of Communication & IT of Egypt for Technology Policies.

He was most recently the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Operations of Iris Financial Solutions; the market-leader provider of front and middle-office solutions for tier-1 global institutions. In this role he was responsible for engineering & development, product management & business development, client solutions & professional services, support and training.

Prior to Iris, Dr. El-Sadany was the Vice President of Global Product Support for Oracle Corporation, managing a $5 Billion business with more than 4000 employees in 55 countries worldwide, which serve more than 240,000 enterprise customers in 19 different languages. Under his leadership, Oracle Product Support margins grew by over $400 Million year over year by streamlining operations and processes through globalization, automation, consolidation, and offshore manufacturing, while achieving the highest-ever customer-satisfaction levels.

Before joining Oracle Corporation, Dr. El-Sadany was the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Datacme Corporation, a visionary Silicon Valley startup with products that automate the creation and building of J2EE mission-critical applications.

Prior to founding Datacme, he was Senior Vice President of Kernel and Server Technologies at TenFold Corporation, where he worked for over seven years. Dr. El-Sadany helped TenFold Corporation grow from a 5-employee start-up to a 1200-employee public company with over $2 Billions market cap.

Prior to TenFold, Dr. El-Sadany spent over five years in various leadership positions at IBM’s research centers. His background also includes software engineering at several international companies. Dr. El-Sadany serves on the board of directors of SafeHarbor Technology Corporation and the board of advisors of several private high-tech companies & non-profit organizations. He is a frequent speaker at numerous industry events, panels, conferences and colloquia. Dr. El-Sadany holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Louisville and two Masters Degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Mr. Amin Khaireldin is currently a member and advisor of strategies to the board of directors of ITIDA. Additionally, Mr. Khaireldin is chairman of the board of directors of the Technology Development Fund (TDF).

For the first 30 years of his professional career, Mr. Khaireldin was employed by IBM. He held a variety of management positions at IBM Egypt, and ultimately became the country branch manager.

He was then relocated to Europe where he spent five years in IBM’s European headquarters in France and Italy holding the position of manager of operations and strategy for the Middle East and Africa.

In 2000, Mr. Khaireldin returned to Egypt and for four years was the managing director and CEO of two high-tech Egyptian companies: Triangle Group and NOL.

Later, he managed the First Capacity Building Program, an initiative launched by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and financed by the Industry Modernization Center, with the objective of improving the international competitiveness of the top 50 Egyptian IT companies.

In December 2000, H.E. Dr. Ahmed Nazif, appointed Mr. Khaireldin to chair the Business Development Workgroup in charge of proposing strategies and programs leading to the development of the telecom sector following its de-regularization.

For 14 months, Mr. Khaireldin led a national effort targeting ICT export growth resulting in the formation of the IT Industry National Development Strategy, announced by Egyptian Minister of CIT, H.E. Dr. Tarek Kamel on June 6, 2006. Presently he is leading the team in charge of the execution of this strategy.

Atef Helmy is currently an active member to the Board of Directors of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), a position he has held since 2008 and is the CEO of Prime Business Consulting.

Mr. Helmy has 30 years of solid experience in the high-tech industry including 24 years managing two of the top 100 Fortune multinationals in the EMEA region. He has participated in more than 100 international conferences and review meetings and workshops in the USA and Europe.

Mr. Helmy started the Oracle Egypt subsidiary in 1996, where he achieved outstanding success by growing the operation and the business significantly.

In 2005, Mr. Helmy played a pivotal role in launching one of the largest global support centers for Oracle Corporation to serve Oracle customers worldwide. This has led to Oracle Egypt being positioned as one of the most successful and largest multinational IT companies in the region.

Prior to his role at Oracle, Mr. Helmy worked for NCR/AT&T for 14 years (from 1982 to 1996) where he has held several sales, marketing and managerial positions. From 1992 until 1996, he held the position of managing director NCR/AT&T, Dubai where he managed to lead the organization to a tremendous growth in terms of revenue, profit margin and customer and employee satisfaction.

His background also includes software engineering at several international companies. Mr. Helmy holds a Master Degree in Computer Science from Ein Shams University, and Electrical Engineering with Honor.

Yasser Elkady recently appointed to the position of the first Deputy to the Minister of Investment in Egypt. Before that, Yasser Elkady was promoted to Managing Director of Cisco’s Middle East & Africa (MEA) operations over two years ago. Elkady continues to lead the Middle East and North Africa (NAL) team as Regional General Manager, a position he has held since mid-2003. He joined Cisco nine years ago as Country Manager Egypt, from where he was promoted to Regional Director of Egypt and North Africa.

As Managing Director, Elkady leads Cisco’s MEA Strategy and Business Development, coordinating all SP, PS, Enterprise Verticals and Strategic Initiatives in the Middle East and Africa Region. Elkady oversees Cisco’s business units in 60 countries and works directly with Cisco’s Vice President for the emerging markets to ensure the successful implementation and execution of all projects across his territories.

Elkady has been instrumental in building strong relationships with regional governments and has worked to develop the region’s base of skilled IT workers through his involvement in three major programs: Egypt Education Initiative EEI, the Jordan Education Initiative (JEI) and the Egypt Competency Center. The EEI and JEI, proposed by CEO John Chambers, has helped foster technology-led reforms and IT learning in Jordan schools through public/private partnerships, while the Competency Center in Egypt – the region’s first and largest e-learning center – is contributing to the education of new generations of highly skilled IT workers.

Elkady has experience working with some of the region’s leading service providers and largest enterprises in his current role, where he works to promote Cisco’s advanced technology Intelligent Information Network solutions in securing large deployments of new networking technologies based on Cisco’s Service Provider and IP Telephony solutions. In fact, Egypt claims the largest deployment of Cisco IP Telephony solutions in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. In addition, great strides have been achieved with Algeria’s e-Government initiative, a project which empowers the country’s ministries to offer enhanced public services through a converged IP network as an important step toward enhancing their efficiency and service capabilities.

After earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics and Data Communications Engineering from Cairo University, Elkady received a Degree in Computer Design from the University of Southern California, USA.

Mr. Hossam Megahed is a board member of ITIDA and member of board for the Chamber of CIT at the Federation of Egyptian Industries. He is also a member of the American Chamber of Commerce and its ICT committee and a co-founder and board member in the Internet Society of Egypt (ISE).

In 2006, he co-founded Flat World Corp., a US-Egyptian company working in the engineering BPO/KPO field.

During this period, Mr. Megahed joined the Alcatel team in Egypt, installing Egypt’s first public data network (Egypt Net) which is being operated by Telecom Egypt. He then joined GE Information services ‘GEIS’ as the team leader for its Egyptian operations.

Later on, he joined the American Chamber of Commerce as the manager of its Business Information Center, and then he founded MNS in December 1997. As the CEO and President of MNS, Mr. Megahed has built strong strategic alliances with key industry players like Microsoft, Cisco, Fenestrae and Wicom that ensured maintaining a continuous edge with the latest technological advances in today’s world. He is also keeping strong and positive relation with various related governmental organizations.

More recently, he assumed the role of CEO of IPMagix, a spin-off from MNS, working in the IP-telephony applications in Middle East and USA.

Mr. Megahed holds a BSc. in Telecommunications from the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University. For the last 22 years he has gained in-depth expertise in the fields of IT, mobile commerce, telecommunications, business information services, electronic commerce, and internet business in several multinational organizations.

Dr. Sherif Hashem is the Senior Advisor to the Minister of Communications and Information Technology for CyberSecurity, and the Executive Vice President of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), Egypt (http://www.itida.gov.eg/; http://www.mcit.gov.eg/) (2004-present). He is also an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt (2001-present).

Dr. Hashem received a B.Sc. in Communication & Electronic Engineering (Distinction with honor) and an M.Sc. in Engineering Mathematics from Cairo University (Egypt – 1985&1988), and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University (USA – 1993). He also completed the Senior Executive Program at Harvard Business School (USA – 2001).

Dr. Hashem authored and co-authored more than fifty articles and book chapters in the areas of information technology, e-commerce, computational intelligence, and operations research, with applications in engineering, energy, environment, and computer sciences (with over 800 international citations).

Dr. Hashem held research positions at Purdue University (USA, 1992-3), West Virginia University (USA, 1997), Honeywell Sensor and Systems Development Center (USA, 1991-2), and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the US-Department of Energy working at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory - PNNL (USA, 1994-5).

Dr. Hashem is currently responsible for e-Signature, cyber security, and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection for software and databases. Dr. Hashem’s responsibility includes setting the framework for establishing and operating the Egyptian Computer Emergency Response Team (EG-CERT) at the National Telecom Regulatory Authority, the Egyptian Root Digital Certificate Authority (Root-CA) and the Software IPR Office at ITIDA. Dr Hashem was the Chairman of the national committee to draft Egypt’s cyber security, data protection, and privacy law; the Chairman of the MCIT committee on CyberSecurity; the Chairman of the High Level Committee for the Egyptian e-Content Competition (2005, 2006); the Chairman of the steering committee of the ITAC initiative that foster the cooperation between ICT companies and R&D institutions; and a member of the technical committee for enhancing the National ID card.

Prior to joining ITIDA in December 2004, Dr. Hashem was the Director of Information Society Development Office (ISDO) and the manager of the E-Business Program at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT). He headed the national committee that prepared Egypt’s electronic signature law, which is Egypt’s first cyberlaw. Dr. Hashem was also the Director of the Egyptian Focal Point for the EUropean MEDiterranean Information Society (EUMEDIS) Initiative (2000-3).

In 2001, Dr. Hashem initiated and managed the first multi-applications smart card project in Egypt. The 3-years project established a Visa-certified infrastructure for issuing and processing smart cards, over a network of Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) and Points of Sale (POS) covering 56 post offices in Greater Cairo and Alexandria. From 1995 to 1999, Dr. Hashem was as a senior consultant and senior project manager at the Egyptian Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC), and at the Regional Information Technology and Software Engineering Center (RITSEC), where he managed several information technology projects in various sectors including electronic commerce, tourism, culture heritage preservation, healthcare, and community empowerment, including the award winning project: Egypt Information Highway (http://www.idsc.gov.eg/), and led the team that established the first government website in Egypt, drawing over 3 million hits per month by mid 1999. In 1997, Dr. Hashem initiated a project to establish the first community oriented IT centers in Egypt (http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/pdf/fg7/egy001.doc), funded by the UNDP and supported by IDSC and the Governorate of Sharkeya. This model was refined and included in Egypt’s National ICT plan adopted later in 1999.

Dr. Hashem carried out several consulation assignments for international organizations including: United Nations Development Program – UNDP, United Nations Ecomonic and Social Commission for Western Asia – ESCWA, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa – UNECA, United Nations Population Information Network – POPIN, International Telecommunication Union – ITU, World Health Organization – WHO, , International Development Research Centre – Canadian IDRC, and the Arab League Education, Culture, and Sciences Organization – ALECSO.

Dr. Hashem was an invited lecturer for the Regional Information Technology Institute / Maastricht School of Management (the Netherlands) joint MBA Program (1997-8). He was a Juror in the Global Junior Challenge. http://www.gjc.it/ (2000, 2002, 2004).

Dr. Hashem received several awards and recognition including: the Global Bangemann Challenge Award (from the King of Sweden: Stockholm – 1999), the International G7-GIP Information Society Award (G7/8: Warsaw – 1997), the Excellence in Teaming Award (PNNL – 1994), and the Spirit Award (Honeywell – 1992). Dr. Hashem is listed in MARQUIS Who`s Who in the World (16th edition – 1999 & Millennium edition – 2000 ) and in Who`s Who in America – Science and Engineering (5th Edition – 2000).

Dr. Hashem is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Egyptian Syndicate for Engineers.Dr. Hashem was a member of the Board of Directors of Egypt’s National Postal Organization (2001-6).

Dr. Khaled Ismail 
Board Member, ITIDA

Dr. Khaled Ismail is the Founder and CEO of SySDSoft, an Egyptian company focused on the design of wireless digital communication systems, which is a global leader in 4G technology IP, and has been selected in 2007 as the first Endeavor High Impact Entrepreneurial company in the Middle East. Between 1990 and 2002, Dr. Ismail was engaged in founding other startups in Egypt in the domain of Solar Energy and Software Development.

Between 2005 and 2007, Dr. Ismail was the senior advisor of the Egyptian Minister of CIT, responsible for Technology Development, comprising the start of a Center of Excellence in Data Mining, the inauguration of the Technology Development Fund, an Incubator for startups, and an annual Business Plan Competition.

Between 1989 and 1997, Dr. Ismail was with IBM’s Watson Research Center in NY. He is the recipient of the IBM Invention Achievement Award and the IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award in 1997 and 1995, respectively. He is also the recipient of the IEEE Honorary Society (Eta Kapa Nu), Best Young Electrical Engineer in the US award in 1994, and the Shuman Award for the Young Arab Engineer in 1995.

Dr. Ismail received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989. He is an IEEE Fellow since 1997. He has published over 160 papers in international journals and holds 22 US patents.