Kennedy Chinedu Okafor
Kennedy Chinedu Okafor a Senior Member, IEEE, USA; Chair of IEEE Consultants Network AG- Nigeria, and a senior teaching researcher with the Department of Mechatronics Engineering, Federal University of Technology, Owerri-Nigeria. Kennedy is a World bank Faculty at the AFRICA Center of Excellence for Sustainable Power and Energy Development (ACESPED), UNN, Nigeria. He received the prestigious Vice-Chancellor Award as the overall best graduating Ph.D. student from the Faculty of Engineering, the University of Nigeria Nsukka in Digital Electronics & Computer Engineering, in 2017. He holds a research Fellowship appointment with Simon Fraser University, BC-Canada (School of Mechatronics Systems Engineering, Autonomous Intelligent System Labs). Kennedy is a Senior Research Associate with the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and serves as a Cisco Systems Ambassador in Africa. Kennedy was formerly an Industry Professor with the Center for Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications (LESA), USA. He formerly worked with Electronic Development Institute under National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, (NASENI) Nigeria as a Senior R&D Engineer producing many research inventions (2006-2014).
Kennedy has various vendor Certifications – IEEE Big Data Analytics®, IEEE Cyber Security®, IEEE Green IT®, Cloud Governance (CCE), CCNA®, (Data Center, R&S), (CCNP®), CompTIA A+®, CompTIA Server+®, Server+, DevNet, and IBM IoT Cloud Developer Certifications. Kennedy has strong R&D experience (16 years+) in Green Energy, Robotics, Advanced Computing, Scale Agile-Scrum designs, Data Center Automation, Big Data Analytics, AI, and Cybersecurity. Kennedy has organized over 50+ IEEE events in Africa and has been on the technical committee of IEEE NIGERCON, ICAST, KBEI Power Africa, BIG Data Africa, MAC-2019, PAC2021, Nigercon2022, etc) while serving as a keynote speaker at IEEE Conferences in Asia and Africa. He has over 150 reputable publications while serving on the editorial review board of more than 33 high Impact factor Journals in the US, UK, Asia, and Africa. He has won over 20+ national and int’l grants from the World bank, Tetfund, IEEE, and NITMA, among others. Kennedy is the IoT Team Lead, Waste Management-Hazard Alert System, (WM-HAS)- a Tetfund, Nigeria Project. Kennedy is the Project lead in COVID-19 Marketplace Robot (IEEE HAC Project), Cisco Digital Skill-UP (IEEE Project), IEEE Solar Blood-bank Project (ISBBP), IEEE ComSoc School Series, and has attracted several portfolios in Africa.
He is the Manager of IEEE Skillup Hub Nigeria, Cisco Academy (FUTO), and PI- MSR Labs, FUTO. In 2018, Kennedy won the category of best reviewer for Web of Science/Publons. Kennedy is the recipient of outstanding Volunteer of IEEE R8 ASYP Congress 2017 (EMEA) and IEEE Nigeria Section NIGERCON Merit Award 2017 (NG). In 2009, Kennedy served with the Nigerian House of Representative Committee on the Cyber-security and Information Protection Bill. In 2010, Kennedy executed a major World Bank Project on ICT in Nigeria. Also, he was the Lead Consultant in the Biometric Data Capture for PHCN in 2011. Kennedy has developed various tech products such as COVID-19 Robots, Ventilators, Smart meters (AMI), Climate change IoT sensor modules, Data-loggers, Micro-grids, Spine-Leaf Datacenters, Digital boards, Energy Tracking Systems, Language Translators & Forensic Robots. He is an author of #3 University books, #2 monographs, #5 Book Chapters, #150+ publications (indexed in Google Scholar, Scopus & Web of Science, SCIE | Publons); reviewed over 280 papers, handled over 285 editorial tasks, (both in Scopus & Web of Science) and has presented papers in both Int’l and local Conferences. Kennedy has supervised/Co-supervised over #50 M.Sc. and Ph. D students.
He serves on the editorial boards of IEEE, Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis, an IGI global Journal mostly in Europe, the USA, the UK, and Asia. To date, Kennedy is currently collaborating with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA; Tetfund-Nigeria, IBM, Cisco Systems, USA, National Instruments, Texas-USA, Smart Power, and Energy Systems Research Group (SPESRG) – University of Johannesburg, South-Africa. Kennedy is the Executive Secretary of the Association of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning of Nigeria, (AAIMLON). He is a Certified COREN licensed engineer and belongs to bodies like NSE, NCS, CSEAN, IAENG, etc, and a Fellow of African Scientific Institute, USA.