Speaker Bio

Dr. Mohamad Nawar Al-Awa is the Regional Advisor on Technology for Development at UN- ESCWA, since 2013. He has more than 25 years of professional, academic and research experience. Dr. Al-Awa has been working on digital technologies for sustainable development, including digital transformation policies, cybersecurity plans, innovation and new technologies frameworks and the related capacity building issues for several years. He provided multiple advisory services and conducted numerous capacity building workshops in ESCWA member states. Previously, he served as an advisor to UNDP-Government Service Reform and modernization project (UNDP-GSR) in Syria and as consultant to International Telecommunication Union (ITU). In Academia, Dr. Al-Awa was the Dean of Information Technology engineering Faculty at Damascus University (2005-2009), and Editor-in-Chief of Damascus University Journal for Engineering Sciences for four years (2009-2013). He lectured in several public and private universities.
Dr. Al-Awa has a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble (INPG) in France (1995), a Master degree (DEA: Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies) in Electronic Systems from INPG-France (1991), and an Computer Engineering degree from Higher Engineering School for Electronics and Communications of Grenoble (ENSERG) in France (1991). He has multiple research papers, published in national and international Journals, as well as several textbooks in Digital Technologies development, Computer Systems, and Information and Communication Technology.