Born in Egypt in 1943, Sedra received his B.Sc. from Cairo University in 1964 and his M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, in 1968 and 1969, respectively. All three of his degrees are in electrical engineering. Sedra joined the faculty of the University of Toronto in 1969 and became associate professor in 1972 and professor in 1978. He served as chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering from 1986 to 1993, and was vice president, provost, and chief academic officer from July 1, 1993, to 2002. In his nine years as provost Sedra led the university through two major long-range planning cycles in 1994 and 1998. On July 1, 2003, Sedra joined the University of Waterloo as dean of its Faculty of Engineering and as professor of electrical and computer engineering. In 2004 he initiated the University of Waterloo Engineering Planning Exercise, VISION 2010. He served as Dean of Engineering until June 2012. A specialist in microelectronics, Sedra's research focuses on applications in communication and instrumentation systems, including theory and design of circuits. Sedra has co-authored three textbooks, including Microelectronic Circuits, now in its seventh edition. The text is published in ten languages, has over one million copies in print, and is one of the most widely used texts on the subject to date. He is co-author with Gordon W. Roberts of the text book SPICE for Microelectronic Circuits published in 1995. His first text book titled Filter Theory and Design: Active and Passive was published in 1978. Sedra has published about 150 scholarly papers, has guided the research of about 65 graduate students, and has also served as a consultant to industry and governments in Canada and the United States. Sedra was a founding member and a member of the board of directors of the Information Technology Research Centre, a designated centre-of-excellence funded by the Government of Ontario. From 1990 to 1994, Sedra was a member of the Scientific Assessment Panel for the Industry Research Program of Technology Ontario, and is currently a member of the Research Council of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Sedra served as a delegate to Oxford University Press and is currently editing the Oxford Electrical and Computer Engineering Series. More recently, Sedra chaired a committee that reviewed the Structure of NSERC Grant Selection Committees.
Awards and honors
Sedra is the recipient of several honorary degrees, including a Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Toronto, Doctor of Science degrees from Queen's University and McGill University, and a Doctor of Engineering degree from Ryerson University Sedra was elected fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Society of Canada. Sedra is the recipient of several awards, including the 1988 Frederick Emmons Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education, the 1996 IEEE Education Medal, the 2000 "IEEE Third Millennium Medal", the 2002 "Engineering Medal for Excellence" from Professional Engineers Ontario, the 2002 "Engineering Alumni Medal" of the University of Toronto Engineering Alumni Association, and the 2010 "Outstanding Service Award to the Canadian Microelectronics Industry" from the Information Technology Association of Canada. In 2002, the "Adel S. Sedra Distinguished Graduate Award" was created by the University of Toronto Alumni Association, to honor Sedra for his accomplishments during his nine years as vice-president and provost of the University of Toronto. For every year since 2003, it has been awarded "to a graduate student who demonstrates outstanding academic and extracurricular leadership". In 2013, the University of Waterloo's 20,000-square-foot student design centre located in Engineering 5 was named the "Sedra Student Design Centre" to honour Sedra as a former Dean of Waterloo Engineering. In 2014, he was made a Member of the Order of Ontario in recognition for his " seminal work which has resulted in major developments in fields ranging from medical technology to wireless communications".
