Biography

Waheb Abdullah was born in 1978, Taiz, YEMEN. He received a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Basrah, Iraq, in 2001, followed by a Master of Engineering (with distinction) in Communication & Computer Engineering in 2011, and a PhD in Electrical, Electronic, and Systems Engineering in 2015, both from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Malaysia. He is registered as a Chartered Engineer (CEng) with the Engineering Council and IET, UK, and as a Professional Technologist with the Malaysia Board of Technologists (MBOT). He is also a Senior Member of the IEEE and served as the chair of educational activities for the IEEE-UKM Student Branch from 2012 to 2013. Waheb is an MIET member of IET UK, as well as a member of IEM and BEM in Malaysia.

He is currently an Associate Professor in Electrical/Electronics Engineering at the College of Engineering, part of the Faculty of Computing, Engineering, and the Built Environment at Birmingham City University in the United Kingdom. His research interests span the Internet of Things, Cyber-Physical Systems, 5G and Beyond, Wireless Networks, and Smart Cities. He also has a keen interest in Low Power Wide Area Networks, including LoRa, Sigfox, and NB-IoT. Previously, he served in various academic, research, and administrative positions at Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Malaysia. These roles included Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the Faculty of Electrical & Electronic Engineering Technology, Research Fellow at the Centre for Software Development & Integrated Computing, Coordinator of Senior Design Projects for undergraduate students, and the Head of the Advanced Electronics & Automation Research Sector. He also led and participated in several research projects in the field of IoT and Wireless Networks and authored numerous articles published in prestigious journals.

Dr Waheb has supervised and co-supervised four PhD students, five Master's by research students, and many undergraduate project dissertations. He has also been nominated as an Internal Examiner for Master's and PhD candidates. He has registered four IPs (Patents/Copyrights) and received numerous gold, silver, and bronze medals and research awards from national and international exhibitions for his innovative research, inventions, and technology. He has served as a Guest Editor for several special issues and is a member of the Editorial Board of esteemed Journals, and has served as a TPC chair/member in multiple international conferences. Waheb is a certified Peer Reviewer from the Publons Academy and serves as a Reviewer for more than 100 prestigious journals indexed by ISI/WoS/Scopus, including IEEE Transactions and top Q1 WoS-Indexed journals from various publishers such as IEEE, Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, etc.

During his PhD studies, Waheb served as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Centre for Research and Instrumentation Management, UKM, Malaysia. Before that, he served as the Planning Director at the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Sana’a, Yemen. His industrial experience in Electrical/Electronics Engineering includes six years as an Electrical Supervisor and Commissioning Engineer with the Public Electricity Corporation in Yemen, before being awarded a fellowship and joining UKM for his postgraduate studies.