Mohammed N Islam received the B.S. degree in 1981, the M.S. degree in 1983, and the Sc.D. degree in 1985, all electrical engineering, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. From 1985-1992 he was a member of the Technical Staff in the Advanced Photonics Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, N.J. He joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1992, where he is currently a Full Tenured Professor. He also has a joint Full Professor appointment in the Biomedical Engineering Department and the University of Michigan Medical School, Department of Internal Medicine.

Islam has published over 135 papers in refereed journals and holds over 145 patents or patents pending.  In addition, he has authored three books and has written several book chapters.  He has also been an invited speaker at over 80 conferences and symposia.

Islam was a Fannie and John Hertz Fellow from 1981-1985, and in 1992 he was awarded the OSA Adolph Lomb Medal “for pioneering contributions to nonlinear optical phenomena and all-optical switching in optical fibers.” He also received the U-M research excellence award in 1997 and became a Fellow of OSA in 1998. In 2002 he received the Texas eComm Ten Award for being one of the 10 most influential people in Texas’s digital economy. He became a fellow of the IEEE in 2004. He is also the first recipient of the prestigious 2007 Distinguished University Innovator Award.