Prof. Dr. Eng. Salaheddin Odeh

Education


Biography

Awards and Fellowships

VDI best doctoral thesis award 1999 in Germany for his PhD thesis "Approximate Knowledge-based Process Visualization on the Basis of Fuzzy Logic".  The prize is awarded every year from the VDI Nordhessen.

(VDI = Association of German Engineers) for outstanding PhD theses in Engineering.

VDI: Verein Deutscher Ingenieure = the Association of German Engineers (Germany)


IEEE best paper award in the category "Infrastructure and Technologies for Engineering Education" for the paper "E-Collaborative Remote Engineering Labs". IEEE Global Engineering Education 2012, Marrakesh, Morocco 17-20 April 2012 (IEEE EDUCON 2012 Awards).


Fellowship 1: 1992 -1994

    Research Project:  Participative Design: Interactive design and evaluation of user interfaces in process control.

Fellowship 2: 1994-1996

    Research Project: Multimedia-based process control.

Lectures

IT and Electronics Skills: C, C++, Java, C#, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS,  ASP.NET, Linux, Solaris, Shell script programming, Microprocessors, Software Engineering, UML, Hardware Design, CAN (Controller Area Network), Control Systems, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Multimedia Systems. 

List of Publications

Research Interests

Multimedia, operating systems, control systems, instrumentation, software engineering, software development, image processing, industrial automation, programming methods and techniques, human-computer interaction, usability engineering. design and evaluation of human-machine-interfaces for process control, task- and knowledge analysis, decision support and knowledge-based systems design and development, control diagnostics and identification of technological processes, simulation techniques, qualitative simulations, fuzzy logic, control and automation engineering, hardware development and implementation, object-oriented software design with C#, C++, and Java, micro-controller techniques and assembler programming, Solaris, Linux, shell programming, networking solutions, fire walls, web servers.

Research Project: Participative Design

Location: Institute of systems engineering and human-machine systems, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany

Detailed project title: Participative Design: Interactive Design and Evaluation of Operator Interfaces in Process Control.

Time period: 1992-1996

Financing: DFG - The German Research Foundation.

Project description: During the first phase of this DFG-project, different methods for user interface design in process supervision and control engineering were developed. Human operators are allowed to participate interactively in the design process from the very beginning by using these methods. In order to achieve effective participation of human operators by designing their user displays, a comprehensive task analysis, powerful rapid design tools (for example Dynavis-X) as well as evaluation experiments in several stages of the design process were needed. Several dynamic user displays with different philosophies such as conventional process visualization using flow diagrams of industrial plants and more advanced visualization techniques (e.g., by means of the multi-flow modeling approach) were realized.

In the second period of this project, the participation aspect was extended to the hypermedia approach in order to improve the motivation and the qualification of human operators. This goal was accomplished using new forms of process visualization, qualitative simulations for animation of already existing user displays, and integration of hypermedia-based user displays in process control systems. All methods and techniques developed during this project were evaluated and tested with a simulated chemical distillation process. This simulation was developed at the Institute of System Dynamics and Control Engineering of the University of Stuttgart.

Graduation Projects

Project 1

Title: Development and implementation of hard- and software components for the data exchange between the system DIEHL (diagnosis in external hardware logic) and the PLC[9] central unit.

Institution: Institute of Control Technology for Machine Tools and Manufacturing Units, University of Stuttgart.

Key words: de-central control system with master/salve control units, PLC, serial data exchange on the basis of the BITBUS concept, 8044 microcontroller, Intel BITBUS-module (computer card with 8044-micocontroller involving firmware), communication and management software programmed with the programming language "C".

Project 2

Title: Implementation and test of problem solving algorithms of a diagnosis expert system for Local Area Network “LAN”

Institution: Institute of Communication Networks and Computer Engineering.

Key words: Diagnosis expert system, knowledge-based systems, structured software architecture, "C" programming language, LAN, Networking, UNIX.

Field Training

Company: Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart, Germany.

Duration: 1-2-1991- 30-4-1991

Description: Development of software and hardware for data exchange between technical components in future cars based on CAN[10] techniques.

[1] VDI: Verein Deutscher Ingenieure: Association of German Engineers

[2] The German title of the PhD thesis: Wissensbasierte Prozeßvisaulisierung auf Basis der Fuzzy Logik.

[3] Ali, S. (1997). Knowledge-based process visualization with fuzzy logic, in: K.-P. Gaertner (ed.), Human reliability, stress and user-oriented automation, 39th conference for human engineering of the German aerospace society (DGLR), pp. 183-196, Karlsruhe. Bonn: DGLR, ISBN 3-922010-98-9.

[4] Ali, S., Heuer, J., Hollender, M. (1997). Participative building of user-interfaces for process supervisory systems through interactive design and evaluation, report published in German for the DFG (DFG: The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft º German research foundation) research project (JOH-139/6-2) for the period 1994-1996, Laboratory for Systems Engineering and Human-Machine Systems (IMAT-MMS), University of Kassel, Germany.

[5] Ali, S., Heuer, J., Hollender, M., Johannsen, G. (1996). Participative design of user-interfaces for supervisory systems, 3rd international workshop on the employment of new kind of information and supervisory systems in traffic, process control and manufacturing, Cologne, Germany, 17-19 May 1994, German Association for Technical Inspection in Rhineland/Germany (TÜV Rheinland), ISBN 3-8249-0345-8.

[6] Ali, S., Heuer, J., Hollender, M. (1995). Participative building of user-interfaces for process supervisory systems through interactive design and evaluation, report published in German for the DFG (DFG: The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft "German research foundation") research project (JOH-139/6-1) for the period 1992-1994, Laboratory for Systems Engineering and Human-Machine Systems (IMAT-MMS), University of Kassel, Germany.

 [7] Heuer, J., Ali, S., Hollender, M., Rauh, J. (1995). Mediation of mental models in a chemical distillation column by means of a hypermedia user-interface, in E. Schoop, R. Witt & U. Glowalla (ed.), hypermedia for education and continuing training, Dresdner symposium on computer-supported learning, Dresden, Germany.

[8] The German title of the Master thesis: Entwicklung und Aufbau einer Ansteuerschaltung für ein großflächiges FLC-Display

[9]Programmable Logic Control

 [10] CAN: Controller area network