Professor and Computer Engineering Chair; IEEE Fellow
School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering
Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering

Dr. Karam received the B.E. degree in Computer and Communications Engineering from the American University of Beirut in 1989, the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1992 and 1995, respectively. She is a full professor in the School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering and the Chair of the Computer Engineering Program at Arizona State University (ASU). Her industrial experience includes image and video compression development at AT&T Bell Labs, multidimensional data processing and visualization at Schlumberger, biomedical image processing with Muscale, and collaboration on computer vision, image/video processing, compression, and transmission projects with industries including Intel, Google, Qualcomm, NTT, Motorola, General Dynamics, and NASA. She has over 230 technical publications and she is a co-inventor on a number of patents.

Dr. Karam was awarded a U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a NASA Technical Innovation Award, the 2012 Intel Outstanding Researcher Award, the 2012 IEEE Phoenix Section Outstanding Faculty Award, and the 2014 IEEE SPS Best Paper Award. She has served on several journal editorial boards, including IEEE SPS journals such as the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, the IEEE Journal on Selected Topics in Signal Processing, and the IEEE Signal Processing Letters. She has also served as the lead Guest Editor of the Proceedings of IEEE, Special Issue on Perceptual-Based Media Processing, and as the Lead Guest Editor of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Special Issue on Visual Quality Assessment.

Dr. Karam is a Fellow of the IEEE.  She is a member of the Signal Processing, Circuits and Systems, and Communications Societies of the IEEE.  She has co-founded two international workshops VPQM and QoMEX, with the QoMEX workshop being held yearly with technical sponsorship from IEEE SPS. She has recently initiated the World's First Visual Innovation Award, which was held for the first time at IEEE ICIP 2016. She has served on several conference organization committees, and IEEE technical committees. In particular, she served as the General Chair, 2016 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (IEEE ICIP), as well as 2011 IEEE International DSP/SPE Workshops; Technical Area Chair, IEEE ICIP 2015; Technical Program Chair, 2009 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing; Social Program Chair, 2008 ICASSP; Member-at-Large, SPS Board of Governors (2016-18); Member, SPS TC Review Committee (2016-present); Member,  SPS Conference Board (2003-05 and 2017-present); Senior Editorial Board Member, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (2014-present); Editorial Board, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing (2014-present); Member, SPS Image, Video, and Multidimensional Signal Processing Technical Committee (2005-11 and 2016-present); IEEE Publication Services and Products Board's Representative to IEEE Women in Engineering (2017-present); Member, IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Strategic Planning Committee (2014-2016); Member, SPS Multimedia Technical Committee (2011-14) and Circuits and Systems Society DSP Technical Committee (1996-present); Member, SPS Nominations and Appointments Committee (2011-14), SPS Education Standing Committee (2010-12) and SPS Technical Directions Board (2008-09) and Chair of its Diversity Committee (2009); Chief Guest Editor, Proceedings of the IEEE, Special issue on Perceptual-based Media Processing; Lead Guest Editor, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Special Issue on Visual Media Quality Assessment; Associate Editor, Foundations and Trends in Signal Processing, IEEE Signal Processing Letters (2004-06), and IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (1999-2003 and 2007-10); and Chair, SPS and COMSOC Phoenix Chapter (1997-98). Dr. Karam served as a member of the ASU University Promotion and Tenure Committee (2014-2016).

Expertise

Image and Video processing; Image and Video Compression; Computer Vision, Machine Learning for Visual Analytics, Digital Filtering; Image and Video Quality Assessment; Multidimensional Signal Processing; human perception; medical imaging

Education

1995, Ph.D. Electrical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
1992, M.S. Electrical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
1989 Bachelor of Engineering, American University of Beirut