Born in Barlekha, a border town in South Sylhet, Karim left home as a boy to study at Faujdarhat Cadet College and later Sylhet MC College, before earning his physics honors degree at the University of Dhaka in 1976. He crossed to the University of Alabama for graduate work, completing a master’s in physics (1978), a master’s in electrical engineering (1979), and a PhD in electrical engineering (1981).

His academic career unfolded across seven American universities. Early faculty posts at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Wichita State University led to a twelve-year run at the University of Dayton, where he founded the Electro-Optics Program and later chaired electrical and computer engineering. He then headed the same department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, before becoming Dean of Engineering at the City College of New York. He spent nine years as the first vice president for research at Old Dominion University, and closed out his administrative career as provost, executive vice chancellor, and chief operating officer of UMass Dartmouth from 2013 to 2020.

Across that arc, Karim built a research record in optical computing, information processing, pattern and target recognition, night vision, displays, electro-optical systems, and sensors, work sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, NSF, NASA, and the US Air Force and Army, among others. He authored or edited 19 books, more than 365 papers, 13 book chapters, and 3 US patents, mentored over 55 graduate students, and guest-edited 36 journal special issues. He edits Optics and Laser Technology, serves as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Education, and sits on the editorial board of Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, output that made him one of the fifty most-published authors in the fifty-year history of Applied Optics.

He’s an elected fellow of seven societies (IEEE, the Optical Society of America, SPIE, the Institute of Physics, the Institution of Engineering & Technology, the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association, and the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences), and has used that standing to push publicly for reform in Bangladesh’s higher education system, campaigning against questionable journals and recruitment practices.