Ali Baraka

Work closely with engineering and product development teams to identify issues and use data-driven solutions for effective decision making.
Build algorithms and design experiments to extract/summarise meaningful knowledge from big data and supply tailored reports to managers, engineers, or the wider organisation.
Apply machine learning, data mining, and statistical tools and techniques to produce solutions to industrial problems.
Undertake program design, coding, testing, documentation and modification work as required to meet the needs of plant.
Manage, maintain and monitor existing process control computer systems to ensure maximum availability to plant.
Implement process control computer systems to meet the technical and functional objectives of plant operation and control.
Supervise and undertake the commissioning of completed systems to meet the specifications of the projects.
Implement quality assurance policies for the design, development and support of software.
Attend plant out of hours when required for fault correction, commissioning, trials, investigations, or support.
Collaborate with Production, Electrical, Mechanical, Technical and IT departments on a wide range of investigations/fault findings, technology reviews and plant trials to provide best technical and cost-effective solutions.
Responsible for implementation of development activities, including RD&T projects and key business projects including yield savings, availability and reduced rework.
Responsible for prioritising process control tasks on a day-to-day basis, review short/long term plans with production and technical mangers and conduct process improvements.
Applied data mining and statistical process control techniques to improve yield by 0.2% and reduce time to market.
Architected and implemented analytics and visualisation components for plant I/O data to predict potential roll breakages and hard cobbles.
Development and commissioning of Cogging Alpha system replacement project.
Included Linux system infrastructure (shared memory, data dictionary and build mechanisms) and most of the core applications.
Interfacing to PLCs and commercial systems.
Working in a small team to tight time-scales.
Development and commissioning of an adaptive control system.
Improved the downgrade performance and reduced the amount of scraps from 0.8% to 0.2% compared to the existing control system.
Design, coding and implementation of Mill predictive data-driven force models, using high-speed serial interface to load-cell measuring equipment.
Development and integration of mill spread models, control strategies, and adaption system.
Design, test and implementation of mill set-ups for 38 new products (from concept through development to delivery).
Migration of Beamer application, which was written in Visual Basic to web-based applications using MySQL databases.
Import and export to Microsoft Excel and other desktop applications.
Automation of roller straightening machine (RSM) at Teesside Beam Mill.
Included interface to GEM80 PLC to send set-up and extract plant status information and interact via web-based applications.
Installation of intelligent lasers system, this has helped saving more than £100,000 a month and increased mill operation efficiency as well as improved its availability by 4%.
Development of live plant datum set monitoring system for Teesside Beam Mill.
Includes data capturing, storing, and visualisation.
Development of Temperature Model for Cooling Banks at Teesside Beam Mill.
Collaborated with Teesside University and University of Sheffield to successfully supervise Masters Level Students (5 students in total).

- Work closely with engineering and product development teams to identify issues and use data-driven solutions for effective decision making.
- Build algorithms and design experiments to extract/summarise meaningful knowledge from big data and supply tailored reports to managers, engineers, or the wider organisation.
 - Apply machine learning, data mining, and statistical tools and techniques to produce
solutions to industrial problems.
- Undertake program design, coding, testing, documentation and modification work as
required to meet the needs of plant.
 - Manage, maintain and monitor existing process control computer systems to ensure
maximum availability to plant.
 - Implement process control computer systems to meet the technical and functional
objectives of plant operation and control.
 - Supervise and undertake the commissioning of completed systems to meet the
specifications of the projects.
- Implement quality assurance policies for the design, development and support of
software.
- Attend plant out of hours when required for fault correction, commissioning, trials,
investigations, or support.
- Collaborate with Production, Electrical, Mechanical, Technical and IT departments on a wide range of investigations/fault findings, technology reviews and plant trials to provide best technical and cost-effective solutions.
- Responsible for implementation of development activities, including RD&T projects and key business projects including yield savings, availability and reduced rework.
- Responsible for prioritising process control tasks on a day-to-day basis, review
short/long term plans with production and technical mangers and conduct process
improvements.

Developed a multi-objective optimisation and data-driven decision-support system, including an optimisation library (C++) and a graphical user interface (Qt).
This is a recommender system to aid the plant operators on making the correct decisions.
Improved the existing mill set-up system.
This has resulted in increasing mill availability as well as reducing the amount of scraps and unnecessary recycling by 3% at a saving of £750k per annum.
Effectively led project for Furnace thermocouple auto fault detection.
This has helped to reduce fuel usage by optimisation of heating.
Delivered training sessions on Mill Set-up and Adaptive Control to production manager, shift managers and team members.

Worked in collaboration with research engineers and project managers (from 12 industrial partners and 7 EU countries) to design retrofit solutions and production improvements in laser-based manufacturing processes.
This work was conducted under the EU H2020 funded COMBILASER project (£3.48M).
Designed and implemented a Self-Learning System (SLS), an intelligent system that enables real-time and automatic self-adaptive feedback to laser-based manufacturing processes.
Designed, installed, and maintained data acquisition systems for process monitoring and integrated the process monitoring systems with the SLS GUI.
Designed, implemented, and deployed an autonomous defect detection tool in laser manufacturing process via laser ultrasound images using computer vision techniques.
The intelligent tools I developed have increased the productivity by 35%, reduced time-to-market by at least 45%, and reduced scrap parts and wastes of up to 50%.
Produced technical reports for project partners and EU commission.
Generated impact via delivering presentations and software demonstration to technical specialists and managers from LZH Germany, HIDRIA Slovenia, RECENDT Austria, LORTEK Spain, and TMCOMAS Spain.
Took responsibility for planning, organising, leading, and writing meeting minutes for the COMBILASER project as well as taking a part in disseminating the project more broadly through media (promotional video, etc.).

Developed simple, transparent, interpretable and computationally efficient soft-computing techniques and human-centric systems for operator(s) of the complex Friction Stir Welding (FSW) manufacturing process at TWI Ltd., TWI Technology Centre (Yorkshire), United Kingdom.
Upgraded the data acquisition system on the PowerStir machine at TWI Ltd., Technology Centre (Yorkshire).
Participated in research project that developed Automated Systems and Manufacturing Informatics and Human-in-the-loop for intelligent FSW tracking and optimisation.
Designed, tested and prototyped an intelligent diagnostic tool to assist the process operators in evaluating product quality and system reliability for TATA Steel Ltd., Scunthorpe, UK.
Worked closely with TWI and TATA Steel engineers to gather software requirements.
Successfully led a day-long software trial session with TWI participants, including engineers and senior managers.
Published 7 peer-reviewed research papers and co-authored one book chapter as well as presented technical work at national and international conferences and meetings.

Delivered practical and tutorial sessions for ACS6101 Foundations of Control Systems and ACS6116 Advanced Industrial Control for ACSE MSc students (~70 students).
Tutored MSc students (~70 students) independently or in small groups (~10 students).
Assisted students (~70 students) with solving complex numerical problems and explained challenging mathematical concepts using MATLAB and SIMULINK.
Mentored two first year PhD students for one year during their studies.
Identified four research projects and developed a handbook for industrial training program to be undertaken as collaboration between University of Sheffield and TWI Ltd., Technology Centre (Yorkshire).