Ahmed K. Sadek (Ph.D. ’07) Named 2025 IEEE Fellow

Ahmed Sadek (EE Ph.D. ’07) has been elevated to IEEE Fellow for contributions to the leadership and development of automated driving and cellular in unlicensed spectrum. Sadek is Vice President of Engineering and Chief System Architect Automated Driving with Qualcomm.

After graduating from Alexandria University, Egypt, Sadek joined UMD through an Outstanding Graduate School Fellowship. At UMD, he joined Professor Ray Liu’s Signal and Information research group, where he honed his skills in research and analytical thinking. After receiving his Ph.D. in electrical engineering, he joined Qualcomm, a multinational company that specializes in designing and manufacturing semiconductors, software and services related to wireless technology.

Originally hired as a systems engineer, Sadek advanced to Principal Engineer, Director of Engineering and then his current position. As Chief System Architect of Automated Driving, Sadek has led the research and development of Qualcomm’s first foray into the field of autonomous vehicles. As a result of his leadership, in 2021 Qualcomm announced a collaboration with BMW to develop assistance technologies for the next generation of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS).

Sadek’s accomplishments through research include the use of AI in autonomous driving (AD) technologies in perception, localization, mapping , prediction and drive policy, and scalable AD solutions through active learning, continuous learning, and designing automated ground truth and annotation pipelines to optimize data collection/storage/annotation and training.

Along with being recognized with a Qualcomm Research Distinguished Technical Contributor Award, he has issued over 120 U.S. patents and worldwide patents and has published over 50 papers in international journals, conferences, and books. He also co-authored the book Cooperative Communications and Networking through Cambridge University Press.

Sadek was recently awarded the 2024 ECE Distinguished Alumni Award for exemplary leadership and technical contributions to advancing the next generation of autonomous driving technologies. He is a member of the ECE Advisory Board.

Published December 17, 2024