IEEE Training
David Whyte completed a degree from the University of Toronto (Electrical Engineering), holds a Professional Engineering License and is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).
He has over 25 years of engineering, practical and management experience in the telecommunications industry in Canada and internationally, holding positions of increasing responsibility at CN Telecommunications, CNCP Telecommunications, Unitel, AT&T Canada, CTI Datacom and DAMAR Consulting. David is the Managing Principal at DAMAR Consulting.
He is currently the President of the IEEE Canadian Foundation, an ex-officio director of both IEEE Canada and the IEEE Foundation. He is the recipient of the 2009 IEEE Canada M.B. Broughton Central Canada Merit Award.
Sylvie Leal joined the IEEE-HKN staff team in 2021. She is the Chapter Relations & Operations Administrator for HKN and is here to help out with anything and everything Chapter-related. Her favorite part of the job is meeting HKN members and working with Chapters during coaching sessions. In her free time, Sylvie enjoys traveling, reading, listening to podcasts, and going to concerts.
Dr. Adil Usman is a postdoctoral researcher at National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Colorado, United States. Before joining NREL, he was a research employee at University of California Santa Cruz, US. Dr. Usman holds PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), India. His research areas of interests include design and diagnosis of electrical machines & power electronic converters, Battery Management System (BMS) in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) and State of Health (SOH) estimation for all electric transportation
systems.
Dr. Usman is a Senior Member of IEEE and is currently serving as one of the board of directors for IEEE Industry Application (IA) Society. He is also a Member of IEEE MGA SAC, serving in the position of Chair for Student Professional Awareness (SPAx) program. Dr. Usman holds more than 45 reputed research publications, more than 20 invited talks and several technical awards and recognitions to his name. He is serving in the Editorial-Reviewer Board of IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications (IA), Industrial Electronics (IE), Transportation and Electrification (TE) and Power Electronics (PEL). Dr. Usman has been serving on the conference committee board of several IEEE conferences for over a decade.
Adil is the recipient of two Best PhD Thesis Awards conferred by IEEE IAS (US) and IEEE Kerala Section (India) respectively. He has been awarded with the Outstanding Student Branch Chapter Chair Award from IEEE IAS, US in 2019 for his continued services and leadership in IEEE.
Ana Laura Gonzalez Rios is a Customer Support Specialist at Dimonoff Inc. She received her B.S. degree in Electronic and Computer Engineering from Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, Mexico, and her M.Sc. degree in Applied Science from Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her research interests include machine learning algorithms for detecting intrusions and anomalies in communication networks as well as virtual network embedding algorithms.
Ana is the Chair of IEEE Canada Membership Development Committee. She has served in the Vancouver Section as IEEE Women in Engineering (2017) and IEEE Young Professionals Chair (2018 – 2020), and in IEEE Canada as Young Professionals Vice-Chair (2020) and Committee Member (2021). She was Committee Chair for the 2018 IEEE Young Professionals Pacific Northwest Leadership Summit; one of the Conference Committee Members for the 2018 IEEE Women in Engineering Tech-W Workshop Powered by Women; Local Chair for the 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics; and Junior Co-Chair for the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics 2020.
Ruben Barrera-Michel is the CEO of HMSM, company dedicated to provide logistic services to American Airlines, United Airlines and Copa Airlines at Guadalajara’s Airport, he is a consultant of these companies too.
Ruben received his Bachelor degree from Universidad del Valle de Atemajac (2004) and he had a Master Degree in Industrial Engineering (2007). He has been a speaker in many conferences such as Leadership, Professional Development, Job Search, Interpersonal Skills, Self-Confidence, Retention & Recruitment in private and public universities.
In 2009 he was recognized as an outstanding engineer by the Governor of Jalisco State and Jalisco Engineer’s Chamber, and received in 2015 the Professional Outstanding Graduated Award from the Universidad del Valle de Atemajac for their work and commitment to society, for the exercise of values in their professional career. In 2021 he was appointed as Alumni Reference for his outstanding professional performance with a positive impact on society.
Thomas holds an MBA degree from Kedge Business School and has worked in various management and business development positions. After holding a strategic position within a human resources consulting firm in Montreal, he joined the Canadian office of Adoc Talent Management. He's now the Managing Director and he's involved in business development, account and project management as well as headhunting missions.
As the Learning and Recruitment Specialist for Canada’s new research commercialization program —Lab2Market, Wesley supports some of Canada’s most promising researchers in assessing the commercial potential of their innovations. With over four years of experience in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship, as a founder, program developer and administrator at Ryerson, Wesley has situated himself at the forefront of research commercialization programming. Wesley is an alumnus of Ryerson’s Master of Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship program and a Lean Startup and Customer Discovery lecturer.