Mohammad Shahid Shaikh
Education
- Ph.D. in Systems and Control, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montréal, Canada (2004) — Thesis: Optimal Control of Hybrid Systems: Theory and Algorithms; Supervisor: Prof. Peter E. Caines. Dean’s Honors List and D.W. Ambridge Prize for outstanding Ph.D. dissertation in Physical Sciences and Engineering.
- M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Michigan State University, USA (1989) — Ministry of Science and Technology Scholar
- B.E. in Electrical Power Engineering, Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan (1986) — Gold Medalist, overall best student, 1981 EE batch
Research Interests
- Optimization and Optimal Control
- Hybrid Systems
- Information Theory and Coding
Biography
Dr. Mohammad Shahid Shaikh has served as Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs at Habib University since August 2025 and has been Professor of Electrical Engineering since September 2024. He has chaired the Electrical Engineering program since October 2023 and previously served as Interim Associate Dean, Academic Affairs (September 2024–July 2025). Over a long tenure at Habib beginning in 2012, he has also held the roles of Associate Dean for Academic Systems and University Registrar (2020–2022), Interim Dean of Faculty (2018), Interim Dean of the School of Science and Engineering (2016–2018), and Program Director of Electrical Engineering (2016–2017), and was Associate Professor from October 2012 to August 2024.
Before joining Habib, Dr. Shaikh was Associate Professor and, at times, Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering at FAST–National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Karachi (2005–2012), and briefly a Visiting Researcher at the University of Calgary (2015) and Visiting Professor at Carleton University, Ottawa (2022). He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University (2004–2005) immediately following his Ph.D., and earlier worked in industry as a Programmer Analyst at the Aga Khan University and as a Software Developer at Harris Computer Systems, Canada, after beginning his career as a Junior Engineer with Pakistan’s Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA).
At Habib, Dr. Shaikh has taught across mathematics, computing, and electrical engineering — including Introduction to Reinforcement Learning, Applied Stochastic Processes, Discrete Mathematics, Probability and Statistics, Electric Network Analysis, and Electrical Machines — reflecting a teaching portfolio that bridges the university’s liberal-arts core and its engineering major requirements.
Dr. Shaikh is a Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC No. Elect/6089) accreditation evaluator and an HEC program reviewer, and has supervised three Ph.D. theses to completion at FAST-NU (in knowledge management, document clustering, and fault-tolerant systems) plus several external Ph.D. thesis committees at NUST-PNEC and Bahria University, along with numerous M.S. theses and projects in document clustering, network coding, and fault-tolerant systems. He has served as Chair (2018–2019) and Vice Chair (2016–2017) of the IEEE Karachi Section, and continues to publish on reinforcement learning pedagogy and machine learning applications.
Selected Publications
- Atif, M.A., and Shaikh, M.S. “Bridging the Gap Between Theoretical and Practical Reinforcement Learning in Undergraduate Education.” Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE 2025), Nashville, TN.
- Hussain, S.M., Jilani, M.N., Haq, M.U., Shaikh, M.S. “A Machine Learning Approach to Arabic Phoneme Classification through Ensemble Techniques.” ICACS’24, Lahore.
- Kafi, N., Shaikh, Z.A., Shaikh, M.S. “Human Computations in Citizen Crowds: A Knowledge Management Solution Framework.” Mehran University Research Journal of Engineering and Technology, 37(3), 2018.
- Nasir, S.Z., Mahmood, T., Shaikh, M.S., Shaikh, Z.A. “Fault-Tolerant Context Development and Requirement Validation in ERP Systems.” Computer Standards & Interfaces, 37, 2015.
- Shaikh, M.S., and Caines, P.E. “On the Hybrid Optimal Control Problem: Theory and Algorithms.” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 52(9), 2007.
Ph.D. Theses Supervised (at FAST-National University)
- Nadeem Kafi Khan, A Framework for Democratic Knowledge Management using Crowd-sourced Human Computation, 2020
- Muhammad Rafi, Document Clustering Based on Semantic Notions, 2017
- Zafar Nasir, A Generic Framework for Fault-Tolerant Context-Aware Systems, 2015
Honors & Awards
- Dean’s Honors List and D.W. Ambridge Prize for outstanding Ph.D. dissertation, McGill University, 2004
- Gold Medalist, overall best student, 1981 EE batch, Mehran University
- Best Paper Award, ICCET 2014
- Chair (2018–19) and Vice Chair (2016–17), IEEE Karachi Section
Professional Affiliations
- Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC No. Elect/6089); PEC Program Evaluator
- IEEE; Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET)
- HEC-approved Ph.D. supervisor and HEC program reviewer
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