Ian S. Shaw

Ian S. Shaw received the degrees of Dr Eng. in Electronic Engineering in 1990 at the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU), Johannesburg and the BSc in Physiology and Biochemistry in 2009 at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), after which he enrolled in a BSc(Honours) course in Pharmacology at the University of Witwatersrand Medical School. In 2007 he lectured an undergraduate course in neuropharmacology at the Department of Zoology, UJ. In addition, he also earned a Certificate of Medical Laboratory Testing and Evaluation in Integrated Medicine in 2009 at SOLAL Technologies, Johannesburg. In 2013 Dr Shaw earned the degree Dr.Phil. in Electrical Engineering (with a biomedical orientation).

As a full-time Associate Professor at RAU, he taught control engineering, digital systems and signal processing for 17 years (1986-2002) at both undergraduate and graduate level. His research areas included mainly intelligent industrial control systems based on fuzzy logic, neural networks, expert systems and genetic algorithms applied to electric power technology, electric traction, traffic engineering, wastewater treatment, manufacturing, mineral processing and industrial engineering. After his early retirement in 1993, he remained active as a Part-Time Professor Emeritus, Research Fellow and Consultant in Intelligent Control Systems at the Research Group of Industrial Electronic Technology, Faculty of Engineering, Rand Afrikaans University, as well as a Consultant in Intelligent Industrial Control Systems for various industrial firms.

Dr. Shaw was a leading contributor in the application of fuzzy logic in industrial control systems. From 1993 on, he held more than 30 fuzzy logic workshops at various industrial companies, universities and technikons in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Bloemfontein, Pretoria, Richards Bay and Durban-Westville. His tutored postgraduate fuzzy controller design and industrial process control courses, supported by the Foundations of Research and Development and later on by the Rand Afrikaans University have been held at RAU every year after 1993 until the merger with other tertiary institutions in 1997. In the same year he organized a successful conference with the title "Industrial Application of Fuzzy Logic" at the RAU sponsored by the South African Council for Automation and Computation, which is the local affiliate of the International Federation of Automation and Control (IFAC).

Besides his extensive experience in the electronics and computer manufacturing industry, applied research and software and systems engineering in the USA (17years), Austria (5 years) and at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria (8 years) and in tertiary education at RAU, Johannesburg (17 years), Dr. Shaw is the author or co-author of more than 70 articles and conference papers, mostly on intelligent control systems.

He was the author of a textbook published in the United States by Kluwer Academic Press (now Springer), entitled “Fuzzy Control of Industrial Systems (Theory and Applications)”. He was a co-author of another textbook on the fuzzy control of industrial systems (“Controle e Modelagem Fuzzy” in Portuguese), published by Editora Edgard Blucher LTDA, SaoPaulo, Brasil.

Dr. Shaw is a Registered Professional Engineer in South Africa, a Senior Member of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE), a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE,USA), and a past Vice President and Executive Member (elected for six consecutive years) of the South African Council of Automation and Computation (SACAC). He also acted as an Advisory Editor of the international journal “Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence”, and an Associate Editor of the “Transactions of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers”. He was also the authorized representative (for South Africa and Brasil) of INFORM Corporation, Aachen, Germany, the world’s foremost manufacturer of fuzzy controller software packages used by industry and universities.