Canadian engineer Elias Ghannoum wins 2024 Lord Kelvin Award

The IEC has awarded its annual Lord Kelvin Award to the Canadian engineer, Elias Ghannoum. The award recognizes exceptional and long-term contributions to global electrotechnical standardization.

Elias Ghannoum is a Montreal-based engineer with more than 50 years of experience in overhead transmission lines. His expertise includes designing and optimizing high-voltage transmission lines and towers, and construction and failure analyses.

During his long career, Mr Ghannoum has provided engineering services for more than 60 transmission system operators and utilities including those in Canada, Greece, India, South Africa, the US and Brazil. His involvement in standards development spans more than 45 years.

The IEC Lord Kelvin Award is our highest honour , said IEC President Jo Cops. It recognizes exceptional and long-term contributions to global electrotechnical standardization.

Overhead transmission lines bring electricity to hundreds of millions of people around the world. They play a crucial role in delivering uninterrupted power to homes, businesses and industries, supporting modern life and economic growth. Mr Ghannoum's work has helped to make them safer, more resilient and more sustainable.

Receiving the award, Mr Ghannoum said: Obtaining this award is an utmost honour and it brings me pride to have been selected from more than 20,000 experts from nearly 170 countries. This recognition highlights the importance of my contribution to standards for overhead lines and conductors.

It also acknowledges my long-term commitment and contributions to improving the reliability and safety of power systems by standardizing transmission line design and mitigating the consequences of their cascading failures .

For the first time, the award took place as part of joint ceremony with the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The RSE also awards an annual medal named after the great scientist and engineer.

The RSE President, Professor Sir John Ball, gave the Lord Kelvin Medal to Professor E Marian Scott, Professor of Environmental Statistics, University of Glasgow, for her ground-breaking statistical research. He said, Professor Scott's work has transformed the application of statistical methods across different disciplines, including environmental science, radiocarbon dating, veterinary science and quantitative archaeology .

Sir John added that Professor Scott's research work had had a significant impact on policy and practice, as demonstrated in her public service appointments to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, EU Scientific Committee on Health, Environment and Emerging Risk, and the NERC Science Committee.

Born 200 years ago in 1824, William Thomson was the first scientist to be elevated to Britains House of Lords. He named himself after the River Kelvin, which flows near the University of Glasgow.

Kelvin is best known today for inventing the international system of absolute temperature that bears his name. He made important contributions to electricity, magnetism, thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, geophysics and several other fields.

Kelvin, who was the founding president of the IEC, was also an accomplished engineer. Among his other achievements, he was responsible for laying the first Atlantic telegraph cable.

Lord Kelvin served three times as the President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which is Scotland's National Academy. It uses the combined knowledge of 1 800 fellows to tackle the most pressing issues facing society, provide independent expert advice to policymakers and inspire the next generation of innovative thinkers.

The IEC is a global, not-for-profit membership organization that brings together close to 170 countries and coordinates the work of more than 20 000 experts globally.

IEC International Standards and conformity assessment underpins international trade in electrical and electronic goods. It facilitates electricity access and verifies the safety, cyber security, performance and interoperability of electric and electronic devices and systems.

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