Hari receiving the ISA Edmonton Section President's Award from Jackie (President).
July 17, 2026
Congratulations to our Hari Rao Mohan Rao, ISA Edmonton Section Membership Chair, on a 2026 to remember. Not only did he receive our 2025-2026 President's Leadership Award, but we are pleased to share that our rising star recently completed his Ph.D. in Control Systems at the University of Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Tongwen Chen and the mentorship of Dr. Sirish L. Shah. His thesis, “Toward Next-Generation Alarm Systems: Data-Driven Alarm Analytics for Process Industries,” received the George Walker Award for the Best Doctoral Thesis in 2026 and was nominated for the Governor General’s Gold Medal for outstanding academic excellence.
Hari is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and is affiliated with the Advanced Alarm Management and Design Research Group. His work focuses on industrial alarm management, process monitoring, fault detection and diagnosis, operator decision support, and applied machine learning for process industries.
Before beginning his graduate studies, Hari gained over 7 years of industrial experience in process control, automation, alarm management, and advanced monitoring applications. He also holds two patent-approved invention disclosures related to the online early detection and prediction of process abnormalities and component failures.
Hari has been actively involved with the ISA Edmonton Section throughout his graduate studies serving as President of the University of Alberta ISA Student Chapter from 2023 to 2025 and later as Past President. As mentioned, he currently serves as Membership Chair and as a member of its Industry Advisory Committee for 2026-2027. For the International Society of Automation (HQ), he serves as a non-voting member of the ISA18 (Instrument Signals and Alarms) and ISA60 (Control Centers) Committees.
Further to the aforementioned awards, this laureate's contributions to research, teaching, leadership, and service have been recognized through several other awards, including the 2026 ISA Edmonton Section Outstanding Achievement Award, the 2024 ISA (Global) Student Volunteer of the Year Award, the Bob Connell Scholarship from the ISA Edmonton Section, the 2025 Graduate Student Service Award, the 2025 Leonard E. Gads Graduate Student Teaching Assistant Award, and Graduate Student Teaching Awards.
"ISA has been an important part of my professional development and has provided me opportunities to connect academic research with industrial practice, contribute to the automation community, and grow from a student volunteer into a professional member and Section leader."
On Monday, June 15, we kicked off the summer patio season with the ISA Edmonton Section AGM & Patio Party! Once again, held alongside our Mentorship Program Wind-Up. Longroof Brewing Co. was the venue of choice.
