Abdullah S. Karar (Senior Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering with a focus on digital signal processing for directly modulated lasers in optical fiber communications from Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada, in 2013. From 2013 till 2014, he held an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship of mathematics and statistics, researching super-channel coherent optical transmission, and was an adjunct Assistant Professor of electrical engineering. In 2014, he joined Infinera Corporation, Ottawa, ON, Canada, as a Senior/Staff System Design Engineer, working on digital signal processing algorithms for coherent optical transceivers. In 2018, he joined the American University of the Middle East, Kuwait, where he is currently an Associate Professor of electrical engineering and Artificial Intelligence Program Coordinator. He has authored/co-authored more than 100 peer reviewed publications in the areas of optical fiber communications, photonics and machine learning and has been granted six US patents. His research focuses on DSP algorithms for short-reach intensity modulation with direct detection transmission systems. He is a Member of Optica.