Member Highlight: Dr. Lina Jamil Karam

Member Highlight: Lina Jamil Karam 
Professor of Electrical Engineering
Arizona State University

Dr. Lina J. Karam is an Emerita Professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at Arizona State University and Director of the R&D Image, Video & Usability (IVU) Lab. She is currently Chief Technical Advisor at AIAEC and expert consultant for various industries and firms in the areas of signal processing, computer vision, AI/machine learning, image and video processing and compression. She was the first woman to be appointed as Dean of Engineering in Lebanon and the Middle East region. Prior to this, she was a full Professor of Electrical Engineering at Arizona State University, where she has been directing the IVU lab. Dr. Karam is renowned for her pioneering work in signal processing, image processing, and computer vision. She has published over 250 technical papers, holds numerous patents, and has made significant contributions to both academia and industry through her work with AT&T Bell Labs, Intel, Motorola, General Dynamics, and Google, and most recently as Chief Technical Advisor at AIAEC (aiaec.ai).

Dr. Karam is an IEEE Fellow and has received several prestigious awards, including the NSF CAREER Award and the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Best Paper Award. She has served on editorial boards of leading journals and played key roles in organizing major IEEE conferences. Her dedication to mentoring, diversity in engineering, and STEM outreach highlights her commitment to advancing the field and inspiring future engineers and researchers.

We approached Dr. Lina Jamil Karam to learn more:

Why did you choose to become a faculty in the field of signal processing?

During my undergraduate studies in Computer and Communication Engineering at the American University of Beirut, although I did not take a foundational digital signal processing course, I was introduced to some aspects of the Signal Processing field through courses related to signals and systems, pattern recognition, and neuroscience/neuroengineering. One of my mentors there, Prof. Adnan Al-Alaoui, with whom I took the Pattern Recognition/Neural Networks course, encouraged me to apply to Georgia Tech, his alma mater, for my graduate studies.

During my graduate studies at Georgia Tech, I took my first digital signal processing course with Prof. James McClellan.This class inspired me to further explore this very interesting field. I was also fortunate to be surrounded at Georgia Tech by some of the great mentors and pioneers of the Signal Processing field. In addition to Prof. James McClellan (co-inventor of the popular Parks-McClellan Digital Filter Design Algorithm and co-author of the pioneering DSP First textbook), who served as my PhD Thesis supervisor, I had the opportunity to interact and be mentored by Prof. Ronald Schafer (co-author of the pioneering Discrete-Time Signal Processing textbook) and Prof. Russell Mersereau (co-author of the pioneering Multi-Dimensional Digital Signal Processing textbook) through courses, projects and as members of my doctoral committee. Furthermore, early in my graduate studies at Georgia Tech, I was encouraged and supported to attend my first signal processing conference and to present my first paper, which I had written and submitted as a single author. Prof. Vijay Madisetti at Georgia Tech graciously offered to cover my conference travel costs, which enabled me to present my paper and experience my first signal processing conference. During my PhD studies, I also had the opportunity to work as an intern in the Signal Processing Department at AT&T Bell Labs (Murray Hill, New Jersey), working on research and development in the areas of video compression and video telephony. There I also had the chance to work and interact with mentors and innovators in the field including but not limited to Dr. Christine Podilchuck, who was my direct supervisor, as well as Dr. Robert Safranek, Dr. James Johnston, Dr. Jelena Kovačević, Dr. Nikil S. Jayant, and Dr. Lawrence Rabiner. These innovators and mentors served as role models and inspired me to want to contribute to the field not only through R&D but also through mentoring students, which led me to pursue an academic career in the field of Signal Processing while also partnering with various industries on technology development and technology transfer.

How does your work affect society?

In my work, I aim to positively impact society through mentoring the next generation, designing and publishing improved solutions to faced challenges, technology transfer, productization, innovative initiatives, contributions to standardization activities, and service to the profession.

First and foremost, mentoring students and junior colleagues helps build the next generation of critical thinkers and innovators, who impact the world by advancing knowledge and building innovative technologies that can bring improved solutions to encountered challenges, and that can improve our quality of life. In addition to supervising graduate students’ theses and undergraduate students’ projects, as a tenured full professor at Arizona State University, I helped in establishing two transdisciplinary programs, the Computer Engineering Program (across Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) for which I served as Chair, and the Robotics & Autonomous Systems (RAS) Program (across four schools). I also initiated various academic-private-public collaborations to help in advancing innovation in various areas. Later in my career, as the first woman to act as Dean of Engineering in Lebanon and the Middle East region, I helped in promoting R&D, innovation, novel curricular development, diversity, cross-disciplinary collaborations, technology transfer, and entrepreneurship. I did this by initiating and enacting improved university and school policies, promoting and establishing cross-disciplinary and industry-government-academic collaborations, acquiring funding, initiating and helping in establishing an industry-focused innovation hub, development of novel curricula and degree programs, mentoring, and strategic hiring.

Through collaborations with industry and technology transfer, my work helped in providing improved solutions and technologies in various sectors, including but not limited to image and video compression and transmission, video streaming, biomedical data processing, medical imaging, automated mobility and advanced driver assist systems (ADAS), cameras/image acquisition devices, displays and televisions, semiconductor manufacturing, geophysical processing, quality assessment, robotics, computer vision, and AI/machine learning. My work with collaborators also helped in enabling and improving industry standards. I am also currently serving as expert consultant and chief technical advisor  in industry, applying my knowledge and expertise to positively impact and advance innovation, technology development, and productization. In recognition of its positive impact on society, advancement of knowledge, and the economies, my work received various  awards. In addition to being elected as IEEE Fellow, the highest grade level in IEEE which is conferred each year to no more than one-tenth of 1% of all IEEE voting members, I was awarded the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Intel Outstanding Researcher Award, U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Technical Innovation Award,  IEEE Phoenix Section Outstanding Faculty Award, and IEEE Region 6 Award. I have also been featured in Research.com among World Top Computer Science Scientists for the last several years.

In relation to service to the profession, with a focus on IEEE service, I have been an IEEE member for more than 25 years and an IEEE Fellow since 2012. I have served the IEEE in various roles including but not limited to IEEE Journal Editor-in-Chief, IEEE SPCOM Chapter Chair, IEEE Phoenix Section WIE Chair,  IEEE Conferences General Chair/Co-Chair, IEEE Conferences Technical Program Chair, IEEE SPS Board of Governors, IEEE SPS Conference, Publication, and Awards Boards, IEEE Circuits and Systems (CAS) Fellow Evaluation Committee, IEEE PSPB Strategic Planning Committee, IEEE TechRxiv Advisory Board (as Chair), IEEE TAB/PSPB Products and Services Committee, IEEE Educational Activities Board (EAB) Faculty Resources Committee, IEEE Industry Engagement Committee (IEC), panelist, keynote speaker, and on various other technical committees, editorial boards, and conference organization/steering committees. I helped in co-founding international workshops and conferences in the field. I also helped in initiating events that promote innovation and industry engagement including, for example, the World's First Visual Innovation Award (available on YouTube) and the Innovation Program, which were held for the first time at IEEE ICIP 2016 in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, and later the World’s First Multimedia Star Innovator Award that was held for the first time at IEEE ICME 2019 in Shanghai, China. By serving on the IEEE PSPB Strategic Planning Committee, I helped in initiating the IEEE Open Preview which allowed accepted conference papers to be published open access on IEEE Xplore prior to the conference meeting. The initiated IEEE Xplore Open Preview was implemented for the first time at IEEE ICIP 2016 and resulted in clear impact in terms of increasing the visibility, citation, and impact of IEEE published work. Due to its impact, IEEE Xplore Open Preview was adopted at other IEEE conferences.

I have also served on editorial boards and as a reviewer for various publishers and organizations, and as an expert delegate of the ISO/IEC participating in standardization activities.

What challenges have you had to face to get to where you are today?

During my career growth, I faced various challenges, and these helped me in learning, growing, and improving my skills further. These challenges are diverse. Some of these challenges include challenges we face in the classroom when catering to a diverse body of students and such challenges help us improve our teaching and communication skills; R&D challenges that help us  improve our critical thinking and innovation skills; technology transfer challenges that help us improve our productization, entrepreneurial, and business skills; time management challenges that help us learn how to more effectively prioritize tasks; leadership and collaboration challenges that help us further our leadership, communication and collaboration skills; cross-cultural challenges that can help us improve our global awareness and further improve our communication skills; challenges in dealing with people who hold standards that differ from our own standards, which helps us learn how to assess such a difference and, consequently, in determine how best or whether it is feasible to pursue a productive working relationship.

Another challenge is the gender bias in engineering, especially as the field has been mainly dominated by men;. For example, I was the first woman PhD student in my supervisor’s group at Georgia Tech. The leadership in engineering (and other traditionally male-dominated fields) is still to a large extent dominated by men. There is also an unconscious bias towards men as being more skilled and more authoritative in this field; this unconscious bias is prevalent in both men and women;. One factor is that a large majority of women in engineering have been mentored by men and have had mainly male colleagues. So, we need to consciously make efforts to eliminate or at least reduce this unconscious bias. The awareness of such unconscious bias and several initiatives, including work by the IEEE WIE and other professional groups, is helping in this respect, and I hope that we can achieve an unbiased larger representation of women at various levels in engineering.

What advice would you give to scientists/engineers in signal processing?

Signal processing is ubiquitous to a lot of areas and is at the core of various technologies. Therefore, scientists/engineers with expertise in signal processing can make impactful contributions to a variety of applications. So, I advise the signal processing scientists/engineers to follow their passion, to determine what areas they most care about and are most interested in improving, and then to surround themselves with mentors and collaborators who have positively contributed to these areas. Such collaborations can help in bringing the most impact. Also, if you believe that something can make a positive impact and if you do not find work or people pursuing it, do not hesitate to kickstart initiatives that can help you in getting closer to your goal of making that positive impact.