Dr K M Baharul Islam, presently the Dean of IIM Kashipur, has been teaching and researching in the area of Communications, Corporate Law, Education, Development and Planning for more than twenty-five years. Starting his career as a faculty at NIT Silchar (1994-2002), he served a number of universities abroad and became a Reader at NCERT, New Delhi in 2002. Between 2007 and 2012 Dr Islam served as the Chairman and CEO of the South Asian Regional Gateway set up by the Development Gateway (USA).  During 2016-2018 he was a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, India where he worked on Translingualism and Migration. He specializes in the areas of Development Program Evaluations, Policy Analysis, Educational Institutional Development, teaching & Research, ICT Policies and e-Government in Asia and Africa. Dr Islam holds the position of Professor of Communications at IIM Kashipur and Chairperson of the Centre of Excellence in Public Policy and Government at the institute.

Prof Islam is a Fellow at the US India Policy Institute in Washington DC. He has been awarded Shastri Institutional Collaborative Research Grant (2018–20) by Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute for the project on “Gender Diversity in Boardrooms and Business Schools” that is being carried out in association with Ryerson University, Canada. He has also been sanctioned an action research scheme project on Continuing Legal Education by the Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India (2018-2019). His has recently conducted a Bangladesh-India study on "Co-deployment of Optical Fibre Cables along the Asian Highways and Trans-Asian Railways for E-resilience" under the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway initiative of the United Nation's Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), Bangkok. During 2015-16 Dr Islam was selected as an International Fellow at the King Abdullah International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue in Vienna, popularly known as KAICIID Dialogue Centre.

Since his joining IIM Kashipur in 2012, Prof Islam successfully conducted three major sponsored projects: (1) The World Bank's Capacity Building Program on Environmental Impact Assessment in South Asia, (2) Development of Performance Indicators for Lower Judiciary commissioned by the Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India, and (3) Development of Disaster Management Strategy for Uttarakhand (sponsored by ICSSR).

Besides teaching Dr Islam has also worked extensively with UN agencies starting as a Consultant for UNESCO in Cambodia in 1998. Later he worked on ICT Policy, Plans and e-Government Strategy with the UN Commission for Africa (UNECA) during 2003-2006. He developed e-Govt Strategies and National ICT plans for several countries. In 2006-2007, Dr Islam served under UNESCAP, Bangkok to conduct an ICT Access Survey in the Asia-Pacific region. He was working for African Development Bank as their Mid-Term NICTSP Review Consultant in Mauritius (2010-11).

He has published widely with more than eight books and 30+ papers/articles to his credit. He is a public speaker, debater, TV commentator and communication specialist. He participated at the BBC World Debate in 2006 that brought him to international development communication limelight. He has written the chapter on ICT and Poverty Reduction for the first Encyclopedia of Digital Governance published in 2006.

He holds LLM in Telecom and Information Technology Laws from the University of Strathclyde (UK), MA (English) from AMU, Aligarh. He did his PhD from the Tezpur University (India) and Post-Doctorate from Asian Institute of Technology (Bangkok) on new technologies in education. He did his MBA from I K Gujral Punjab Technical University and a second PhD on Transitional Justice from Don Bosco University, Assam. Besides he has also done B.Ed. specializing in Educational Planning and Administration. Dr Islam is a recipient of Majaz Gold Medal in MA and United Kingdom Telecom Academy Fellowship. Two of his past projects in India and Ethiopia have received The World Bank’s Development Marketplace Certificate of Recognition in 2003 and 2007.