Ferial El-Hawary received the M. Sc. from the University of Alberta, Canada in Electrical Engineering and the Ph.D. from Memorial University of Newfoundland in Oceans Engineering. She is Cofounder and President of BH Engineering Systems Limited of Halifax, and the "Modeling and Signal Analysis Research Laboratory" in the Faculty of Engineering at the Technical University of Nova Scotia (TUNS). Dr. El-Hawary supervised many of graduate students at TUNS and her research work has been supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Grants.

Dr. El-Hawary has been involved in OCEANS Activities both technically and administratively having been a member of the Marine Technology Society (MTS) since over two decades. She is the founding Chair of the MTS' Canadian Maritime Section, Halifax, N.S., Canada and has served the MTS with many capacity.

Dr. El-Hawary continues to be involved in OCEANS Activities both technically and administratively as a current member of the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society Administrative Committee (AdCom) having served as Vice- President International, and Past Chairman of the Membership Development Committee. She was nominated to serve as President of the Society. Ferial has been instrumental in establishing the Canadian Atlantic Chapters of Oceanic Engineering Society, and she is recognized for her leadership roles in establishing strong IEEE/OES European Chapter based in France as well as the IEEE/OES Chapter based in Trondeheim, Norway. Ferial was heavily involved in the organizing Committees of OCEANS'87, OCEANS'97 Conferences, and CCECE'2000 in Halifax, N.S., Canada and OCEANS'94, OCEANS'98 in France. Dr. El-Hawary is the current Chair of Eastern Canada Council of IEEE Canada, and a member of IEEE Committee on Women in Engineering.

She has organized and chaired many Technical sessions as well as Panel Discussions at the OCEANS Conferences for the past two decades. Dr. El-Hawary served as Chair of the Tutorial Program for many OCEANS Conferences including OCEANS'01. She has published widely, and was guest editor of a special sequence of issues for the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering on Advanced Applications of Control and Signal Processing in the Oceans Environment. Also she is the Chief Editor of "The OCEANS Engineering Handbook" published in 2001 by IEEE and CRC Press. Currently she is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering Society (JOES).

She is a recipient of IEEE Canada Wally Read Service Award for 2000, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal' 2000, the 1999 RAB Achievement Award, 1997 IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society Distinguished Service Award . She is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), and a Fellow of the Marine Technology Society (MTS). Ferial served as president of IEEE Canada in 2008 and 2009.