Karim Takes On Oversight Roles with Research Association
Mohammad Karim, vice president for research at Old Dominion University, has been named chair of the Finance Committee of the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA). He will serve a two-year term extending through 2013.
As the committee chair, Karim will be a member of the SURA executive committee and of the Finance and Audit Committee of Jefferson Sciences Associates, the SURA company that manages and operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News.
SURA, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a consortium of more than 60 universities. In addition to Jefferson Lab, the consortium also oversees the SURA Residence Facility, which accommodates national and international researchers who work at Jefferson Lab.
The SURA mission includes collaborating with its members, government agencies and researchers to advance information technology and bring about better understanding of coastal/ocean and environmental phenomena.
ODU and Jefferson Lab have a strong research partnership in nuclear and accelerator physics. Many ODU faculty members are heavily involved in the experimental and theoretical nuclear physics programs at Jefferson Lab. ODU and Jefferson Lab also share the objective of meeting the future national and international needs for well-trained accelerator scientists and together have established a Center for Accelerator Science in ODU's physics department.
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 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.
Since joining ODU in 2004 to lead the Office of Research, Karim has been a leading figure in interdisciplinary research and programs. 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 all of the ODU colleges; and an alternative energy initiative that involves chemists, biologists, oceanographers and a variety of engineers.