Rate My Professor Sondoss El Sawah

Professor Sondoss El Sawah is a Professor in the School of Systems & Computing at UNSW Canberra, University of New South Wales, a position she has held since joining the university in 2014. She serves as Director of the Capability Systems Centre, where she coordinates large-scale industry-funded research projects and builds capabilities in systems thinking and modelling. El Sawah also holds an honorary Associate Professor affiliation at the Australian National University and is an Inaugural Associate of the ANU Institute for Water Futures. She completed her PhD in 2010 at the University of New South Wales School of Engineering and Information Technology, focusing on the use of integrated modelling for learning and communication in water planning. Her research advances systems thinking applications across public policy, engineering, and education, with key interests in systems thinking and modelling, multi-method modelling processes, pedagogy of systems and participatory modelling, learning and decision making under deep uncertainty, complex socio-environmental-technical problems, and the integration of systems thinking, modelling, and artificial intelligence.

El Sawah has produced over 90 academic publications, including high-impact journal articles such as 'Teaching Systems Thinking in Higher Education' (INFORMS Transactions on Education, 2022, with Ho ATL and Ryan MJ), 'An overview of the system dynamics process for integrated modelling of socio-ecological systems: Lessons on good modelling practice from five case studies' (Environmental Modelling & Software, 2017, with Pierce SA et al.), and 'A methodology for eliciting, representing, and analysing stakeholder knowledge for decision making on complex socio-ecological systems' (Journal of Environmental Management, 2015, with Guillaume JHA et al.). She is Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Modelling & Software and has guest-edited special issues for Annals of Operations Research and Mathematics and Computers in Simulation. Her contributions have earned numerous awards, including the Australian Operations Research Society Rising Star Award (2016, first female recipient), International Environmental Modelling and Software Society Research Award (2018), Peter Cullen Trust Fellowship (2014, outstanding fellow of the year), and multiple best paper awards from international conferences (2019, 2017). El Sawah is Vice President of the Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand (2020-), convener of MODSIM 2019, and member of scientific panels such as the CSIRO Basin Futures Program review. She coordinates the Master of Systems Engineering, teaches postgraduate courses in systems thinking and simulation applications, and has delivered over 30 professional development courses to government agencies and industry, including the Royal Australian Air Force.