Wasif Naeem
Member of the Future Mobility Grand Challenge Research Committee
Wasif Naeem BEng, MSc, PhD is a Reader (Associate Professor) in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at QUB and is also a member of the Centres for Intelligent Autonomous Manufacturing Systems and Energy, Power and Intelligent Control. His doctoral and postdoctoral research were both part of EPSRC-funded academia-industry collaborative projects to develop autonomous marine vehicles.
He is currently leading collision avoidance research for a fully electric, hydrofoiling ferry as part of a £35M project led by Artemis Technologies (2020 – 2025). He was also the Principal Investigator from QUB on an £1.3M InnovateUK-funded Rolls Royce led MAXCMAS research grant (2015 – 2017) developing path planning and collision avoidance strategies for marine vehicles. From 2020 – 2023, He was the coordinator of an EU-funded Erasmus+ project (€390k) on development of training programmes in the area of Industry 4.0 related smart manufacturing.
Dr Naeem’s research interests span optimal control, system identification, process control and systems engineering. He has authored over 105 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and 3 book chapters. Two journal papers in the area of guidance of unmanned marine vehicles were awarded the Michael Richey Medal and IMarEST Denny Medal respectively by the Royal Institute of Navigation and Institute of Marine Engineering Science and Technology (IMarEST). Two of his conference presentations in marine navigation were awarded the IMarEST ‘Most Innovative Research’ and best poster paper awards. Dr Naeem has successfully supervised over 12 PhD students in the general area of robotics. He is a member of the prestigious EPSRC College, a member of IFAC Technical Committee on Marine Systems and an Executive Committee member of the UK Automatic Control Council. He also regularly sits on expert review and prioritisation panels invited by the Research Council of Norway and been on Programme/Steering Committees and Associate Editor of a number of other international conferences. He has been instrumental in bringing three international conferences to Belfast including the International Control Conference (Control2016) as the Local Organising Chair, 29th International Irish Signals and Systems Conference (ISSC2018) as the General Chair and the IFAC International Conference on Intelligent Control and Automation Sciences (ICONS2019) as the Co-Chair.