When he was 12 years old, Mohamed Ibrahim’s mom boarded a plane and left for Canada. He didn’t see her again until he was 15.  

His mom’s decision to leave Sudan for Canada came suddenly, Ibrahim recalls. Times were tough in the east African country. The economy was in shambles, and the threat of war made the future uncertain. It was against this backdrop that Ibrahim’s parents decided his mom would leave Sudan to join her brothers in Hamilton with the hopes of bringing Ibrahim, his brother and father to Canada soon after.  

The three years that he, his brother and father stayed behind were difficult, he said. They moved around, living with different family members while they waited for word from Canada. He missed his mom terribly and it was even worse for his brother who is six years younger than him.  

They were reunited in January 2004, and Ibrahim recalls those first months in Canada as being filled with happiness and hope. He understood what his parents went through and how much they struggled to give him and his brother a better life.  

“I came here determined. My parents put all of their hopes in my brother and I, so we had to make them proud.”  

A few years passed. He graduated from high school and was working as a pizza delivery driver on weekends while he figured out what to do next. One day, while he was making a delivery, he heard the radio announcer talking about how Mohawk College had received a grant that would give software engineering students the chance to work on applied research projects with real employers.  

“I remember thinking how amazing it was that those students would get to do that kind of work,” he says.  

The message stuck. Ibrahim enrolled in the Software Engineering program at Mohawk in 2009, attracted by the hands-on experience college offered. As fate would have it, he eventually found himself working on the very same applied research projects — funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) — he had heard about on the radio a few years before. He impressed his professors and the college. Mohawk hired him as soon as he graduated in 2012.  

Today, he is Junior Software Architect at Mohawk’s mHealth and eHealth Development and Innovation Centre (MEDIC). He has worked on nearly 30 provincial, national and international digital health projects and has mentored more than 50 co-op students. He also teaches part-time with the Faculty of Engineering Technology.  

An emerging leader in health informatics, Ibrahim is currently working with Myanmar’s Ministry of Health and Sports to build and deploy a national patient registry that will serve as the building block for a national digital health infrastructure for the Southeast Asian country.  

“I’ve always enjoyed doing things that have great impact, and working in health care is a great way to do that.”  

As for the future and what it holds, Ibrahim is busy studying part-time to earn a degree in Software Engineering from McMaster University. This fall he has been nominated for a Premier’s Award of Excellence from Mohawk College.  

As for what his parents think of their son’s success, “they are very proud of me,” says Ibrahim. 

By: Sean Coffey 

This story was originally published in Fall 2017 of the Mohawk Alumni In Touch magazine.