Dr. Ali Abedi

Recent technological advances enabled low cost small satellite development and launch services which gave rise to the new space economy.  Democratizing access to space feeds innovation and bolsters economic development taking the market away from a few large corporations and allowing smaller businesses to compete and thrive. In this talk, the process of creating a space corporation in Maine with examples of space based applications and research and development projects will be presented. Audience will learn more about opportunities and pitfalls in this new era. 

Biography:

 Ali Abedi graduated from National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents (NODET a.k.a. Allameh Helli) in 1992 with diploma in Mathematics and Physics. He has received his B.Sc and M.Sc degrees in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology and his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering, from University of Waterloo in 1996, 1998, and 2004, respectively, all with focus on Communication Systems. From 1998 to 2000 he was with the department of Electrical Engineering at the Air-Force University as lecturer and director of undergraduate research center. He worked as lecturer at the University of Waterloo and adjunct professor at Queen’s University in 2004 and 2005 teaching graduate and undergraduate courses, and conducting research funded by NSERC.

Dr. Abedi joined the University of Maine, Orono in 2005, where he is currently Associate Vice President for Research and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He serves as Director of Exepriential Programs Innovation Central (EPIC), the Center for Undergraduate Research (CUGR), and Innovative Media Research and Commercialization Center (IMRC) at UMaine. He was visiting Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD and Guest Researcher at NIST in 2012 and Faculty Fellow at NASA in 2016. Dr. Abedi is founding Director of WiSe-Net Lab where he directs research programs wireless communications and sensor networks for structural monitoring, space explorations and bio-medical applications. He is co-Founder of two startup companies (Activas-Diagnostics and Nawindor). Dr. Abedi has received a number of awards and recognitions from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Canadian Space Agency (CSA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He is a senior member of IEEE and has served on several IEEE Boards and Committees at local, regional, national, and international levels.  Dr. Abedi is Co-founder of IEEE International Conference on Wireless for Space and Extreme Environments (WiSEE), served as IEEE Region-1 Northeastern Area chair, Associate Editor for IEEE Journal of RFID, IEEE/KICS Journal of Communications and Networks (JCN), IET Wireless Sensor Systems (WSS) Journal, and 2022-23 Vice President of IEEE Council on Radio Frequency Identification (CRFID).  Dr. Abedi serves as program evaluator (PEV) for ABET (Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology) since 2016 and as Extra class accredited Volunteer Examiner (VE) for ARRL since 2012.