Masmahwik

General

I am a new user to Wikipedia (October 2013), but I have extensive experience as an author of technical articles, editor of reports and technical journal editor. I served as Editor-in-chief of one of my area's most prestigious and selective journals for several years, and remain an active Associate Editor for it and three other journals. I also serve on the editorial boards of several journals. My writing and publishing experience as author and co-author includes over 250 refereed journal articles, two books, 20 book chapters, 100 conference proceedings and 150 technical reports-- Google Scholar credits my writings with about 11,500 citations.

Nevertheless, Wikipedia offers a distinctly different approach and venue for sharing knowledge, and I am humbly willing to learn.

Impressions

The wiki culture is impressive-- starting with the volunteerism, (which is also common in most academic journals, where editors and referees are all volunteers), to the seeming adherence to a set of shared values that appear to permeate the place. Also impressive is the transparency of all transactions, with traceable trail, though the anonymity here means that there is not the kind of "accountability" that editors of professional journals have towards authors.

The standards for publication in an encyclopedic context are different than in publishing original research; in the latter authors must prove originality and significance of the new knowledge. In an encyclopedia, the intent is not to disseminate new knowledge, but rather to compile existing knowledge. The burden on the author is to demonstrate that the statements are neither opinion nor new knowledge, but rather statements of existing facts that are compiled together for convenient access, search and retrieval.

Areas of interest

My technical areas of expertise are in systems engineering, including transportation and telecommunications systems, and the physics of urban systems. I have wide-ranging interests around those areas, from physical design to optimal operation, and to human behavior and social interactions-- including behavioral economics and agent-based models. I am widely versed in statistical methods, econometrics and increasingly dealing with the challenges of big data and predictive analytics. I develop simulation tools, optimization models and algorithms, and apply them to large-scale systems.

For Wikipedia, I am more interested in broadening my contributions to areas of general interest, such geography and history, population dynamics, economic and social development, the history of social systems, the sciences, and education across the world. Geographically, I am interested in North America, Francophone and Latin Europe, and the Middle East. I am also passionate about music, and have pretty good knowledge of modern blues and jazz, and 60's to 90's rock and popular music.

In addition to English, I am fluent in French and Arabic.