Jamil Shariff

Jamil is a writer, educator, multidisciplinary freelancer and consultant. His passion is for environmental technology, especially the obscure but useful, like biogas digesters, sand-bag houses, or velomobiles. He has a first degree in politics, and received his Masters degree in energy and the environment in architecture.

Jamil has frequently written and delivered technology based courses to disseminate his experiences with new technologies. These include sucking up used grease from restaurants to fuel the car he converted to straight vegetable oil himself, and building parts of the fibre-glass weather protection on his own velomobile. Courses he has taught range from post graduate classes at the University of East London on Stirling heat engines, to private training sessions on biodiesel production for a Calgary based cooperative.

His publication credits include See and Velovision print magazines, as well as frequent contributions to a variety of popular environmental websites. Jamil has served on the board of directors of well-known environmental groups, like the the Sierra Club, and the lesser-known but likely even more relevant, such as the Toxics Watch Society. He has been involved with international groups whose aim is to transfer renewable energy know-how to some of the least developed parts of the world.

His consulting experience includes government infrastructure value contracts, and leading ethics awareness communications projects for non-profit groups. He has also spent periods ghosting corporate communications, drafting environmental impact studies, designing websites and building online communities. His insatiable curiosity and hunger for ever newer (or older) ideas for inventions are what drew McGraw-Hill Professional to commision his first book: 50 Green Projects for the Evil Genius.

Jamil currently works for a sustainable innovations incubator called the Boxfish Group and is based out of Ottawa, Canada.