Introduction

Welcome to my home page. I am an Assistant Lecturer in the Arab Academy for Science Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT) and a PhD student in Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. I am part of the VT-MENA program hosted in Egypt.

Bio

Born on March 25th 1981 in Cairo, Egypt, I spent my childhood in Nigeria where my father worked as a missionary doctor in the south western town of Abeokuta. More information about my family is available here. I sat for the IGCSE in 1996 and achieved a grade of excellent (straight A's and some A*'s). I then moved to Egypt and enrolled in the computer engineering department of the AASTMT. I graduated in 2002 with a GPA of 4.00 out of 4.00. I was hired as a teaching assistant in the AASTMT upon graduation. In 2005 I earned my MSc in computer engineering with a GPA of 4.00 out of 4.00. The topic of my MSc dissertation was "The Use of Gait as a Biometric for Person Identification from Surveillance Videos". I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. My advisor at VT is Dr. Binoy Ravindran, and we work in the Real-Time Systems Laboratory. My external Ph.D. advisor is Doug Jensen of the MITRE Corporation.

 

Current Research

 

I am currently working on methods for providing timeliness guarantees for real-time distributed threads. This research uses the standard techniques of distributed computing (such as consensus, quorum based protocols etc) to provide some sort of timeliness guarantees on distributed systems. Our ultimate goal is to be able to provide such guarantees even if the underlying network is a dynamic, fault prone MANETs.

 

List of Publications

 

*     Fast Scheduling of Distributable Real-Time Threads with Assured End-to-End Timeliness, S. Fahmy, B. Ravindran, and E. D. Jensen, 13th International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies - Ada-Europe 2008, June 2008, Venice, Italy

*     On collaborative scheduling of distributable real-time threads in dynamic, networked embedded systems, S. Fahmy, B. Ravindran, and E. D. Jensen, 11th International Symposium on Object/component/service oriented Real-time distributed Computing (ISORC), May 2008, Orlando, USA

*     Scheduling Distributable Real-Time Threads in Networked Embedded Systems in the Presence of Crash Failures and Message Losses, S. Fahmy, B. Ravindran, and E. D. Jensen, ACM Symposium On Applied Computing (SAC), Track on Real-Time Systems, March 2008, Ceara, Brazil

*     Using Ears as a Biometric for Human Recognition, ICCTA, 2006, Alexandria, Egypt

*     The Use of Gait as a Biometric for Person Identification from Surveillance Videos, ICCTA, 2005, Alexandria, Egypt

*     A Novel Hybrid Moving Object Detection Algorithm for Video Surveillance Applications, ICICIS 2005, Cairo, Egypt

*     The Design and Implementation of An E-Management System for the Arab Academy for Science and Technology and Maritime Transport, and the Effect of this System on Faculty Performance, IIEC_2, 2003, Cairo, Egypt

 

Work Experience

 

1-     I was on the organizing committee of the URSI Conference hosted by the AASTMT in March 2005

2-     I was part of a research group funded by Telecom Egypt to design a decision support system to aid in choosing the appropriate telecommunication technology for deploying new telephone services in rural and dense urban areas in 2006

3-     As part of my job as a teaching assistant in the AASTMT, I taught the following subjects

a-      Operating Systems

b-     Microprocessor Design and Interfacing

c-      Digital Logic Design

d-     Digital Systems Design

e-      Object Oriented Programming

f-       Assembly Language for the 8086 family

 

Hobbies

 

1-      I am an avid reader with an eclectic taste in literature. My interests range from the Greek classics to modern thrillers and non-fiction. More about that here.

2-      Philately is one of my passions and I have a good collection of stamps. More about that here.

3-      I love the visual arts and am a particular fan of Baroque art and architecture. I do not like modern paintings and have a particular aversion to abstract expressionism.

4-      I like swimming and biking, apart from that my knowledge of sports is very limited J

5-      I like classical music and neoclassical music. My favorite neoclassical band is Secret Garden