The International Association of Professional Congress Organisers has named Mohamed Sherif, General Manager at ICOM DMC, part of ICOM Group, as the winner of the IAPCO Driving Excellence Innovation Award 2026.
Supported by IMEX, the award recognises innovation that challenges conventional practice and delivers measurable value to the meetings industry.
Sherif was honoured during the IMEX Gala Dinner in Frankfurt for leading the development of the CardioAlex Smart Shuttle System, a proprietary transport solution created for CardioAlex 2025, one of the Middle East and Africa’s largest cardiovascular conferences.
Held annually at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, CardioAlex 2025 welcomed more than 6,200 cardiology professionals across three days of scientific sessions, live cases, workshops and international faculty exchange.
The smart shuttle system replaced traditional fixed hotel-bus allocations with a data-driven, round-robin model using real-time routing, live fleet management and delegate-facing GPS tools. The result was a smaller, continuously circulating fleet serving 18 hotels and 1,600 rooms, while reducing total vehicle deployments to 47 buses across the event.
According to IAPCO, this represented a 47.8% reduction in fleet size compared with 2023 and a 44% reduction compared with 2024, lowering fuel consumption, emissions and operational costs without compromising the delegate experience.
“Sherif’s work is a powerful example of innovation in action. Operational excellence, sustainability and delegate experience should not be viewed as competing priorities, but as interconnected outcomes,” said Sissi Lignou, IAPCO President.
“By turning a complex, recurring logistics challenge into a smart, scalable solution, Sherif and the ICOM Group team have demonstrated how intelligent operational design can unlock better outcomes for conferences, communities and the environment.”