May 7, 2013
Dear Colleague,
It is with mixed emotions I report that Dr. Mohammad Karim, vice president for research, will be leaving Old Dominion this summer to become Provost and Executive Vice-Chancellor at the University of Massachusetts' Dartmouth campus. We will miss his steady leadership, but at the same time we are pleased that he has been given this opportunity to take on new and expanded professional responsibilities.
As a vice president, I chaired the committee that selected Dr. Karim for his current position in 2004. In the nine years we have worked together, I have found him to be a man of remarkable intelligence and diligence. As the leader of our Old Dominion University Research Foundation and of a staff that has been innovative in promoting grant writing and intellectual property initiatives, Dr. Karim has directed Old Dominion's overall rise in research stature. In addition, he has directly supervised several special projects that have come to exemplify the creativity and economic impact of work done by our faculty and student researchers.
Dr. Karim has a multidisciplinary background, having graduate degrees in physics and electrical engineering, that helped him guide our research initiative. He also now has been elected six times as a Fellow of science and technology organizations, more than any other ODU faculty member or administrator. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Optical Society of America, the Society of Photo-Instrumentation Engineers, the Institute of Physics, the Institution of Engineering & Technology and the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences.
Outside the university, he has held our banner high in a variety of positions. For example, he has served as chair of the Finance Committee of SURA, the Southeastern Universities Research Association. As such, he has been a member of the SURA Executive Committee and a member of the Finance and Audit Committee of Jefferson Science Associates, which manages and operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News.
I hope you will join with me in celebrating what Dr. Karim has accomplished at Old Dominion and wishing him well in his new position.
Sincerely,
John R. Broderick
President