Kerim Demirbaş was born in Alanya, Turkey, in 1951. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Istanbul, Turkey, in 1973; and the M.S., Engineer, and Ph.D. degrees, all in electrical engineering, from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), USA, in 1977, 1979, and 1981, respectively.

In 1973-1974, he was an engineer of Department of Electronic and Communication Engineering, ITU, Istanbul, Turkey. From 1978 to 1981, he was at UCLA, first as a postgraduate research engineer, and then as a postdoctoral scholar. During 1981-1984, he was a senior research scientist at the Honeywell Systems and Research Center, Minneapolis, Minn., USA; working on signal and image processing algorithm development for target recognition and analyzing the performance of defense systems. From 1984 to 1992, he was on the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA. In 1987-1988, he was a visiting faculty member of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. During the summer of 1990, he was a visiting research fellow at Marmara Scientific and Industrial Research Institute, the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey, Gebze, Turkey. From 1998 to 2000, he was a visiting faculty member on the Faculty of Engineering at Mediterranean University, Antalya, Turkey. From 1992 to 2018, he was on the faculty of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, where he was first an associate professor (1992-1994) and then a professor (1994-2018), Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey. He retired from METU in 2018. His research interests are in the areas of Communication Systems/Signal and Image Processing. He has authored or co-authored 34 refereed technical journal articles, published in journals covered by Web of Science, three chapters in advanced series, several conference papers and technical reports.

Dr. Demirbaş received the research award for Individual Achievement and Contributions to Engineering Excellence from the Honeywell Systems and Research Center in 1982; research and promotion awards for International Technical Publications from Founder Foundations of Bilkent University in 1988, and Prof.Dr. Mustafa N. Parlar Education and Research Foundation of Middle East Technical University in 1993. His education was supported by scholarships from the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). He was listed in Who's Who in California in 1987.