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PhD finds his calling: Jad El-Najjar 

By Dawn Wiseman

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As he gets ready to receive his PhD, Jad El-Najjar (Electrical and Computer Engineering) is interviewing at a number of Montreal telecommunications companies.

“But it’s nice I have a Plan B,” he said.

Plan B is an NSERC Industrial Research and Development Fellowship (IRDF). These two-year post-doctorates are awarded to the most promising recent doctoral graduates so that they can engage in research and development in the private sector and with not-for-profit and non-governmental organizations.

El-Najjar’s fellowship is hardly surprising: during his time at Concordia he has maintained a perfect GPA, published widely and received two best paper awards for his work in the area of optimization of wireless mesh networks for telecommunications.

He came to Concordia for its expertise in this area, and has been working with professors Chadi Assi and Brigitte Jaumard at the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering (CIISE). This collaboration has been a highlight of his experience at the university.

“These are two professionals who each give 100% to motivate you as a student. Assi, in particular, likes to challenge people and sets extremely high expectations.”
El-Najjar clearly rose to the occasion, and said he feels extremely grateful to be taking the skills he has developed at Concordia into either industry or the academy.

“These things will be with me for the rest of my career.”