IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q1 2023 - 8

CAS Society News
Interview
An Interview with Professor Adel Sedra
Prof. Adel Sedra's Bio:
A
del Sedra received the B.Sc. degree from Cairo University,
Egypt, in 1964, and the M.A.Sc. and Ph.D.
degrees from the University of Toronto, Canada,
in 1968 and 1969, respectively, all in electrical engineering.
Dr. Sedra joined the faculty of the University of Toronto
in 1969, rising to the rank
of Professor in 1978. From 1986
to 1993, he served as the Chair of
the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering. On July 1,
1993, he assumed the position of
Vice-President, Provost, and Chief
Academic Officer of the University
of Toronto and served in this capacity
for nine years, leading the
university through two major longrange
planning cycles, in 1994 and
1998. He joined the University of
Waterloo in 2003 and served as its
Dean of Engineering for nine years,
leading the Faculty through two
strategic plans, Vision 2010 and Vision
2015. In October 2013, he accepted
an invitation from Ryerson
University to serve as a Distinguished Fellow, University
Leadership and served in this capacity for six years.
Since July 2014, he has been a Distinguished Professor
Emeritus at the University of Waterloo.
Prof. Sedra specializes in the area of microelectronics.
He has coauthored about 150 papers and three textbooks
including Microelectronic Circuits, which is now in its eighth
edition and has been translated into nine languages.
Dr. Sedra served on the Research Council of the
Canadian Institute of Advanced Research (CIFAR)
for nearly 20 years, and was a member of the Expert
Panel of the Council of the Canadian Academies that
produced the report " The State of Science and Technology
in Canada, 2012. " Awards and honors include:
FIEEE (1984), FCAE (1999), FRSC (2003), Education
Medal of the IEEE (1996), and Award of Excellence of
Ontario Professional Engineers (2002). He holds seven
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCAS.2023.3239651
Date of current version: 12 April 2023
8
IEEE CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS MAGAZINE
honorary doctorates: Queen's University (2003), University
of Toronto (2005), McGill University (2007),
University of Victoria (2013), University of Calgary
(2015), Ryerson University (2015), and Western University
(2017). In January 2014, Dr. Sedra was invested
in the Order of Ontario.
Question 1: Your undergraduate and
doctoral degrees are all in electrical
engineering. Can you share with our
CAS readers how you first got into
electrical
engineering? What
are
the circumstances that led you to
research in circuits and electronics?
Prof. Sedra: My interest in studying
engineering was motivated by two
things: first and foremost, I was very
interested in mathematics and physics,
and secondly in my country of
origin, Egypt, in the 1950's studying
engineering was highly encouraged
as the country was embarking on a
major wave of industrialization. As
evidence of how Egypt at the time
valued education, when I completed high school in 1959
with the highest overall grade in the country, I was honored
at a national celebration and had the opportunity to
shake hands with Egypt's President, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
As an undergraduate engineering student at Cairo
University, I narrowed my choice of engineering field to
two: civil engineering and specifically structural, and
electrical engineering.
I chose electrical engineering
and never looked back! Specifically, in my first course in
linear circuits I fell in love with circuits. I loved both the
abstraction and its special language as well as its practical
application. This love affair stayed with me to this
day. Of course, over the intervening six decades, I dealt
with many kinds of circuits, but it is still all circuits!
My first encounter with research came in my final
undergraduate year where for my graduation project,
I worked with one of my professors, Dr. Abdo El-Said on
modeling the bipolar junction transistor (BJT). Now, this
was a major departure for me as all the electronic circuits
I had learned thus far utilized vacuum tubes. It was 1964,
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