Allaa R. Hilal

R&D Software Developer

Allaa Hilal
Allaa R. Hilal is an engineer, software developer, STEM enthusiast, PhD holder, mother, loving wife, and an aspiring artist. She has her Doctorate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo and a Masters degree from the German University in Cairo in which she joined the Networks and System Integration research group in Ulm University, Germany, to conduct her research. Allaa has been recognized and awarded numerous prestigious scholarships, most prominent of which are NSERC IRDF, NSERC CGS, Fulbright, DAAD, and OGS. She was also recognized by the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship as a Google scholar for her active role and leadership in supporting women in technology. She currently blogs about being a woman in the tech industry sharing her thoughts and experiences, as well as providing advice for future women in technology.

Allaa is currently an R&D Software Developer and member of the innovation and emerging technology team at IMS, a world-renowned expert in connected car technology. She has worked on IMS’ unique, real-time Connected Car Experience, where insights gained from wearable technology, weather and traffic information are transformed into situation-aware knowledge to anticipate driver behaviors and predict expected road conditions. While driving, the DriveSync connected car platform also gives drivers personalized audible coaching when unsafe behaviors are observed; including dangerous speeding, harsh cornering and tailgating, as well as comprehensive usage-based insurance (UBI) updates.

As a researcher, Allaa has worked on various innovative research projects; such as distributed sensor management operations, routing path selection in vehicle networks, passive energy management for body area networks, improving the Quality of Service (QoS) for real-time interactive data over mobile networks, and detection of breast cancer lesions in distorted noisy mammograms, to name a few. Her PhD work focused on the design of an intelligent sensor management system that optimizes the use of the available network resources to provide a highly scalable energy-aware operation that is context-aware. She has published numerous research papers in world-renowned conferences and journals.

Believing each citizen’s role in changing their community and inherently impacting the world, Allaa has always been an active member in her community. As the vice president of student advocacy in the University of Waterloo graduate student association, as well as the chair of the gender and family issues committee. Allaa successfully worked with her committee to change the childcare bursary and subsidy regulations to benefit the graduate student community. Allaa has also been involved with several non-profit organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Engineers without Borders. 


Allaa R. Hilal is the industry speaker at Go ENG Girl 2014