Dr Osama Olaby BEng (Hons), MSc, PhD, AFHEA

Osama Olaby

Department of Mechanical Engineering
Research Fellow in Mechatronic Systems

Contact details

Email
o.olaby@bham.ac.uk
Twitter
@OOlaby
View my research portal

Osama Olaby is currently a research fellow working on novel railway track switching and positioning systems at Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCRRE).

Over the past two decades, Osama has accumulated extensive experience in research and teaching across four different countries, including two esteemed UK institutions, two European universities, and four institutions in the Middle East. He is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA) in the UK and is qualified for Academic Positions in France.

His diverse experience, spanning both academia and industry in the UK and abroad, has provided him with a unique perspective on Control Engineering, Mechatronics, Modelling and Simulation, Systems Integration and Automation. This perspective is enriched by his work in multidisciplinary areas like Medical Robotics, Health Care, and Rail Transport.

Osama has published over 25 research papers in scientific journals as well as international conference papers. 

Qualifications

  • Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, 2020
  • Qualification to Academic Positions at French Universities (in Computer Engineering, Control Engineering and Signal Processing), 2006
  • PhD in Control Engineering and Medical Robotics, INSA Lyon, France, 2006
  • MSc in Control systems, Toulouse III Paul Sabatier, France, 2003

Biography

Osama was awarded a BEng (Hon’s) in Control Engineering & Industrial Electronics in 2000 from the University of Aleppo, and an MSc in Control Systems in 2003 from Toulouse III- Paul Sabatier University. He studied for a PhD in Control Engineering and Medical Robotics at the Laboratoire Ampère -INSA Lyon, graduating in November 2006.

From 2007 until 2016, Osama worked as Assistant and then as Associate Professor in Department of Control Engineering and Automation at the University of Aleppo. In 2016, he worked as a Researcher in the Biomedical Engineering and Telemedicine Research Group at the University of Cadiz.

Osama joined Loughborough University as a Research Associate-Control Specialist in November 2017. He moved to the University of Birmingham in February 2019 to work as Research Fellow in Mechatronic Systems for Railways in the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCRRE).

Teaching

Delivering lectures

  • Railway Control and Digital Systems

Assisting Modules

  • Mechatronics Design
  • Mechatronics-Microprocessors and control
  • LM Sensing and Control for Autonomous Systems

Postgraduate supervision

  • Supervisor of MSc projects in Railway Engineering.
  • Co-supervisor of final year projects in BEng, Meng, MSc.

Dr Olaby warmly welcomes postgraduate students (co-supervising) with a keen interest in multidisciplinary research in the field of Control Engineering.

Research

Research interests

  • Control Engineering and Mechatronics Systems
  • System modelling and simulation
  • Medical Robotics
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • RFID Applications in Railway Engineering
  • Switching system in Railway Engineering
  • Modelling, Simulation and Control of Pneumatic systems
  • Robots Motion planning in dynamic environment

Current projects

  • Shift2Rail-In2Track3 Railway Positioning System based on RFID Technology
  • Repoint: Novel railway track switching system

Other activities

Osama has served as a reviewer in many IEEE/ACM, MDPI and IFAC journals/conferences and several international conferences.

Publications

O. OLABY, R. AMBUR, M. ENTEZAMI, R. DIXON., "Development of an Integrated Monitoring System for Railway Infrastructure Using RFID Technology As a Key Enabler", UKACC 14th International Conference on Control (CONTROL 2024), IEEE, 10-12 April 2024, Winchester, UK. 

DUAN H., DIXON R., STEWART E., OLABY O., "Disturbance Observer-Based Sliding Mode Controller for Regulating Pantograph–Catenary Contact Force", 22nd IFAC World Congress (IFAC WC 2023), Yokohama, Japan, 9-14 July 2023. 

R. KRČ, R. AMBUR, Z. HADAŠ, O. OLABY, I. VUKUŠIČ, O. PLÁŠEK, M. ENTEZAMI, R. DIXON, “Condition monitoring and trend analysis of railway turnouts based on in-situ accelerometer measurements”, 5th International Conference on Railway Technology (Railways 2022), 22-25/08/2022, Montpellier, France. 

O. OLABY, M. SAMRA, M. HAMADACHE, R. DIXON, “Modelling of an accurate positioning system using RFID technology for enhanced railway track maintenance”, 5th International Conference on Railway Technology (Railways 2022), 22-25/08/2022, Montpellier, France. 

O. OLABY, M. HAMADACHE, D. SOPER, P. WINSHIP, AND R. DIXON, “Development of a Novel Railway Positioning System Using RFID Technology”, Sensors, vol. 22, no. 6, p. 2401, 21 March 2022.

DUTTA S., AMBUR R., OLABY O., HAMADACHE M., STEWART E., DIXON R., "Continuous Time Parameter Estimation Method for a Railway Track Switch Actuator”, 2022, 13th UKACC International Conference on Control, CONTROL 2022, pp. 56-59.

O. OLABY, S. DUTTA, T. HARRISON, C. P. WARD, AND R. DIXON, “Realisation of a Novel Functionally Redundant Actuation System for a Railway Track-Switch”, Applied Sciences, vol. 11, no. 2, p. 702, Jan. 2021.

HAMADACHE M., AMBUR R., OLABY O., DUTTA S., SHIH J.-Y., STEWART E., DIXON R., "Innovative Technologies for Railway Track Switches", 21rst IFAC World Congress (IFAC WC 2020), Berlin, Germany, 12-17 July 2020. 

OLABY O., HAMADACHE M., AMBUR R., DUTTA S., STEWART E., DIXON R., "Novel Actuation Mechanism for Railway Track Switch System based on Maglev Technology", 21rst IFAC World Congress (IFAC WC 2020), Berlin, Germany, 12-17 July 2020. 

DUTTA S., AMBUR R., HAMADACHE M., OLABY O., SHIH J.-Y., STEWART E., DIXON R., "Health Monitoring of a Railway Track Switch Actuator Based on Continuous-Time Parameter Estimation Method", 8th Transport Research Arena (TRA 2020), 27-30 Apr 2020. 

DUTTA S., OLABY O., HARRISON T., HENSON S., "Development of controller for Repoint railway track switch using NI-LabVIEW and CompactRIO", National Instruments website, 11/ 04/2019.

HAMADACHE M., DUTTA S., OLABY O., AMBUR R., STEWART E., DIXON R., “On the Fault Detection and Diagnosis of Railway Switch and Crossing Systems: An Overview”, Applied Sciences, vol. 9, no. 23, p. 5129, Nov. 2019. 

HAMADACHE M., DUTTA S., AMBUR R., OLABY O., STEWART E., DIXON R., "Residual-based Fault Detection Method: Application to Railway Switch & Crossing (S&C) System," 2019 19th International Conference on Control, Automation and Systems (ICCAS), Jeju, Korea (South), 2019, pp. 1228-1233.

OLABY O., DUTTA S., HARRISON T., WARD C.-P., DIXON R., "REPOINT-Light full-scale track switch: experimental results at a railway testing site", 8th IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems (MECHATRONICS 2019), Vienna, Austria, 4-6 September 2019. 

DUTTA S., OLABY O., HARRISON T., KAIJUKA P., SARMIENTO-CARNEVALI M., BEMMENT S., WARD C., DIXON R., "Development of Controller for REPOINT Light Railway Track Switch", UKACC 12th International Conference on Control (CONTROL 2018), IEEE, 5-7/09/2018, Sheffield, UK.  

DUTTA S., HARRISON T., SARMIENTO-CARNEVALI M., OLABY O., BEMMENT S., WARD C., CHALISEY A., DIXON R., "REPOINT- designing a radically new switch machine", 4th International Conference on Railway Technology (Railways 2018), 3-7/09/2018, Sitges, Barcelona, Spain. (Also on Link)

SANCHEZ-MORILLO D., OLABY O., FERNANDEZ-GRANERO MA., LEON-JIMENEZ A., "Physiological Closed-Loop Control in Intelligent Oxygen Therapy: a review", Journal of Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 2017 July ;146: 101–108. 

SANCHEZ-MORILLO D., OLABY O., FERNANDEZ-GRANERO M., LEON-JIMENEZ A., "Automatic Recognition of Daily Physical Activities for an Intelligent-Portable Oxygen Concentrator (iPOC)", In: Rojas I., Joya G., Catala A. (eds) Advances in Computational Intelligence. IWANN 2017, Part I, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), vol 10305 pp. 212–221, 2017. Springer Verlag, Cham. 

MOREAU R., OLABY O., PHAM M.-T., BRUN X., DUPUIS O., "Simulateur d’accouchement automatisé BirthSIM pour l’apprentissage sans risque des gestes obstétricaux", Journées Doctorales MACS (JDMACS’07), Reims, France, 09-11/07/2007, pp 285-286. 

OLABY O., "Robotique pour l'apprentissage de gestes médicaux. Mise en œuvre de séquences d'accouchement automatisées", PhD thesis, INSA Lyon publication (France), 2006, 203 p.)

MOREAU R., OLABY O., DUPUIS O., PHAM M.-T., REDARCE H.-T., "Paths analysis for a safe forceps blades placement on the BirthSIM simulator", IEEE – Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation-ICRA2006, 15-19/05 2006, Orlando-Florida, USA, pp. 739-744. 

OLABY O., BRUN X., REDARCE T., MOREAU R., DUPUIS O., "Automatic childbirth procedures implanted on the BirthSIM simulator", IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems - IROS’06, 09-15/10/2006, Beijing, China, pp. 2370-2375. 

MOREAU R., JARDIN A., PHAM M.-T., REDARCE H.-T., OLABY O., DUPUIS O., "A New Kind of Training for Obstetrics Residents: Simulator Training", 28th IEEE EMBS Annual Int. Conf.-EMBC06, 30/08-03/09/2006, New York City-New York, USA, pp 4416-4419. 

OLABY O., BRUN X., REDARCE T., MOREAU R., DUPUIS O., "Automation of a mechanical childbirth simulator using electropneumatic components", 4th Fluid Power Net Int. (FPNI)-PhD Symp., Sarasota-Florid, USA, 13-16/05/2006, Vol. 2, pp 543-555. 

OLABY O., BRUN X., SESMAT S., REDARCE T., BIDEAUX E., "Characterization and Modelling of a proportional valve for control synthesis". 6th JFPS Int. Symp. on Fluid Power, 07-10/12/2005. Tsukuba, Japan, pp 771-776. 

MOREAU R., OLABY O., PHAM M.-T., BRUN X., REDARCE H.-T., "Le simulateur BirthSIM: Pour l'apprentissage du geste obstétrique sans risques". 5ème Journées Nationales de la Recherche en Robotique -JNRR'05, Guidel, France, 05-07/10/2005, pp 285-286. 

OLABY O., BRUN X., SESMAT S., REDARCE T., "Caractérisation et Modélisation d’un distributeur proportionnel électropneumatique pour la Simulation et la synthèse de commande", JDMACS-JNMACS 2005, Lyon, France, 05-07/09/2005, pp. 57-63. 

OLABY O., BRUN X., SESMAT S., REDARCE T., "Caractérisation et Modélisation d’un distributeur proportionnel électropneumatique pour la Simulation et la synthèse de commande", Sciences et Technologies de l’Automatique (e-STA), 2005, Vol. 3. 

OLABY O., SILVEIRA R., BRUN X., PINSARD P., DUPUIS O., "Description de Procédures d'Accouchement en Vue de leurs Implantations sur un Simulateur Robotisé", 18ème Journées des Jeunes Chercheurs en Robotique, Douai, France, 08/09/2004, pp. 56-60. 

View all publications in research portal

Languages and other information

English (fluent), Arabic (Mother), French (fluent), Spanish (Basic)

Media experience

I have been interviewed by the Network Rail media team at the University of Birmingham talking about the great achievements and the benefits of the new railway positioning system, developed using the RFID technology at Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCRRE), which was tested recently on railway operative environment in NR RIDC Tuxford. 

Audio and video

On-site testing of the new positioning system based on RFID technology