Biography: Professor H.E. Hanrahan
Hu Hanrahan is Professor Emeritus in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering
at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He received both the B.Sc.(Eng)
and PhD degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand. After a time as a postgraduate
student, he joined the staff of the Electrical Engineering Department at Witwatersrand
University. In 1977 he was appointed to the Siemens Chair of Communications Engineering.
He has served as Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and as Dean of
the Faculty of Engineering. He retired from the Siemens Chair at the end of 2005 and is
now Professor Emeritus in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering.
In 1994, Telkom first supported telecommunications research at Wits. In 1997 the Centre
for Telecommunications Access and Services (CeTAS) was founded with the support of
Telkom and Siemens telecommunications. CeTAS is a research and advanced teaching
centre devoted to improving knowledge and practice in the evolving telecommunications
access network and telecommunications services. From 1997 to 2005, Professor Hanrahan
lead CeTAS. This centre was the home of the South African TINA Trial and is now involved
in research into various forms of Next Generation Networks. The projects within CeTAS
is aimed at new ways of delivering telecommunications and information services with
adequate quality. These projects have resulted in some 80 publications and have involved
70 graduate students. He continues to prosecute research and supervises postgraduate
students. He teaches a number of courses at the postgraduate level, including Intelligent
Networks and Advanced Telecommunication Service Architectures. He is the author on a
forthcoming book on convergence and next generation networks.
He is active in the development of standards for professional registration and accreditation
of engineering degree and diploma programmes and is a consultant to the Engineering
Council of South Africa (ECSA) on the development of their system of standards. He leads
projects to develop competency standards for registration of engineers, technologists and
technicians. Recently, he carried out a project to define the attributes of a technology
leader in the telecommunications field. He has represented ECSA at meetings of Washington
Accord Signatories from 1993 to 2005. In 2004, he participated in the International
Engineering Workshop culminating in the development of statements of the attributes
of graduate engineers, technologists and technicians as well a competency standards for
professional practice.
He is active in accreditation of engineering programmes, serving as team member, team
leader and visit chair for ECSA as well as Washington Accord mentoring and monitoring
visits. He has developed and conducted accreditation training courses for ECSA.
He serves on the Higher Education Quality Committee of the Council on Higher Education
and its accreditation committee.
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