2017 MGA Young Professionals Achievement Award

Each year, the MGA Young Professionals Achievement Award recognizes individuals who have had substantive projects or achievements that are relatively short in nature (about 1-3 years) but have left a lasting impact on IEEE Young Professionals.This year, two winners are two IEEE SIGHT volunteers. The winners of the 2017 MGA YP awards go to Anis Ben Arfi of Region 7 and Simay Akar of Region 10!

Keep reading to learn more about each award recipient and their achievements.

Anis Ben Arfi

“For exemplary contributions to student activities and young professionals in IEEE, and for promoting humanitarian technologies.”

 After his B.Sc graduation with honors from SUP’COM Tunis, Anis Ben Arfi joined the Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary as a graduate student after showing promising research skills and being awarded with a scholarship to carry out his research activities with the iRadio Lab team. His research interests centre on designing and enhancing the performance of low-power radio frequency transceivers, mainly through the application of new types of modulation schemes, software defined topologies, digital predistortion techniques, and wireless sensors networks. Anis is holding a number of leadership positions at his university, he is currently the governance committee chair of the graduate students association, and the chair of the IEEE Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technology Southern Alberta Section (SIGHT), and he also served as the president of the Graduate Engineering Students Consortium at the University of Calgary.

 

Simay Akar

“For outstanding contributions to the IEEE Women in Engineering, Young Professionals and Humanitarian Technology activities.”

Sımay Akar is an active IEEE volunteer since 2007 and has been serving several volunteer membership and leadership positions. She is graduated from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey

Simay is currently working in the solar industry in Suzhou, China- as Overseas Marketing Manager of Suzhou Talesun Solar Technologies Co., Ltd. is a photovoltaic manufacturer with an annual capacity of 3 GW cells and 5 GW modules in China and Thailand. She is responsible for Americas, MEA, Australia and Japan regional marketing activities. She was in charge of business development, strategic marketing and sales activities of CSUN Eurasia’s- a Chinese PV modules and solar cells manufacturer- solar cells which made in its factory in Istanbul, Turkey between 2013-2015 and covering international sales activities among many countries as Business Development and Sales Manager. She has been honored with CSUN Outstanding Staff Award in December 2014. She has served several volunteer activities in different organizational units including Student Branch (METU), Sections (Turkey and Nanjing-China), Regions (8 and 10), Societies (PES, SSIT) IEEE Day, IEEE SIGHT and Humanitarian Activities, IEEE TAB (WUG), IEEE MGA (WIE and Young Professionals) and many others.