IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Magazine - January 2020 - 53

(From left) William Rouse and
Don Brown, both IEEE SMCS
past presidents, engage in
conversation with Keith Hipel and
Mo during IEEE SMC 2017.

associate dean of engineering at Dalhousie University, stated, "I came to the
understanding very early on that I could
never keep up with this man, because I
was in the presence of a giant. He was
honored and respected by his peers,
and I know of very few others who have
been as prolific, as productive, and as
passionate as was Dr. El-Hawary. His
sharp wit, his wry smile, his dry humor
and his infectious laughter will always

he engineering community suffered a tremendous loss upon
receiving the sad news of the
passing of Prof. Mohamed "Mo" ElHawary, the founding editor-in-chief
(EIC) of IEEE Systems, Man, and
Cybernetics Magazine, IEEE Systems,
Man, and Cybernetics Society (SMCS)
Board of Governors (BoG) member-atlarge, and all-around long-time IEEE
volunteer. For those of us who knew
him as a volunteer for the IEEE, he
was always a pleasure to be around
but also quite a hard worker when it
came to scholarly and professional service to our profession. Moreover, Mo
was a consummate family man.
Among his other areas of service
to the IEEE SMCS, Mo served as the
EIC of the Society's eNewsletter from
2012 to 2015 and twice as general chair
of the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (the IEEE SMC) when held in
Canada-1984 in Halifax and 2007 in
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSMC.2019.2952197
Date of current version: 15 January 2020

A selection of Dr. El-Hawary's many awards and recognitions, which were
on display at his memorial service.

be in my memory. I will not be likely to
see farther than him. I did everything
that I could do to catch up to him, let
alone stand on his shoulders."
Dr. El-Hawary was a great lover of
animals, classical music, politics, traveling, and taking selfies. He was also
a devoted father, grandfather, brother,

and friend. He especially enjoyed being with family and friends and making them all laugh and smile in Canada
and in travels around the world. He enjoyed spending as much time as possible with Ferial, the love of his life, with
whom he has shared adventures in exotic locations all around the world.

Testimonials for Our
Esteemed Colleague,
Mo El-Hawary

"As an outstanding technical
leader, Mo demonstrated his
wonderful leadership skills and
made enormous contributions to
our professional communities,"
notes Mengchu Zhou.

Ja nu a r y 2020

Montreal. More recently, Mo served as
publicity chair for IEEE SMC 2017 in
Banff, Canada, and was serving in the
role of awards chair for IEEE SMC 2019
in Bari, Italy. Mo was known for contributions to electric power systems
engineering and computational intelligence and was an author of textbooks,
research monographs, and research
publications. He was the recipient of
many awards for his long record of
technical contributions and service,
including the 2019 Outstanding Contribution Award from the IEEE SMCS.
Members of the BoG were a ll
shocked by Mo's passing, realizing the magnitude of its impact on
so many individuals and activities
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IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Magazine - January 2020

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