MOHAMMAD KARIM, ODU RESEARCH VP, IS ELECTED IEEE FELLOW

Mohammad A. Karim, vice president for research at Old Dominion University, has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which is an honor bestowed each year on no more than one-tenth of one percent of the organization's voting membership throughout the world.

The IEEE citation recognizes Karim for "leadership in engineering education through creation of interdisciplinary programs."

Before joining ODU in 2004, Karim took leadership roles in establishing multidisciplinary academic programs: computer engineering degree programs at the University of Dayton, City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Tennessee; biomedical engineering degree programs as well as a department at CUNY; earth and environmental systems science and engineering degree program at CUNY; and electro-optics doctoral program and department at Dayton.

He also led the CUNY blueprint team responsible for planning and distribution of photonics faculty members at six CUNY senior colleges - Brooklyn College, City College, College of Staten Islands, Hunter College, Lehman College and Queens College.

Since joining ODU to lead the Office of Research, Karim has put emphasis on interdisciplinary programs and research. Cross-discipline collaborations happen, for example, at the university's Frank Reidy Research Center for Bioelectrics, where electrical engineers and physicists brush shoulders with biologists and medical doctors; the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC), which brings together faculty members from almost every discipline represented at ODU; and alternative energy initiative, which involves chemists, biologists, oceanographers and a variety of engineers.

The Office of Research under Karim's leadership has awarded more than $3 million in seed grants through a special program to promote interdisciplinary research. Some of those grants have been for projects in which ODU faculty members collaborate with researchers at other Virginia institutions.

Karim has a multidisciplinary background himself, having graduate degrees in physics and electrical engineering. 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 previously had been honored by the Optical Society of America, the Society of Photo-Instrumentation Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Institute of Physics, the Institution of Engineering & Technology and the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences.

Altogether, ODU has 74 Fellows in these national and international organizations. The university's other IEEE Fellows are Karl Schoenbach, the university's Batten Endowed Professor of Bioelectrics Engineering; Mounir Laroussi, professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the university's Laser and Plasma Engineering Institute; and Ravindra Joshi, University professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Karim is the author of 15 books, 325 research papers and six book chapters, and has served as guest editor of 18 special issues of scholarly journals. His research has been sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation, U.S. Air Force, Naval Research Laboratory, U.S. Army, NASA, U.S. Department of Education, Ohio Aerospace Institute, U.S. Department of Defense, and Avionics Laboratory of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He serves on the Governor's Virginia Research and Technology Advisory Commission and on the board of the Southern Universities Research Association.