Karim Antonio Vindas Yassine

Karim Antonio Vindas Yassine is a Costa Rican-born physicist and engineer based in Brussels, Belgium. He represented Costa Rica three times at the International Mathematical Olympiad (2006, 2007, 2008), winning a bronze medal in 2008. After earning top university-admission marks in Costa Rica he moved to France, completing a PhD in Physics for the Life Sciences at Universite Grenoble Alpes in 2017 on plasmonic fibre-optic biosensors. He now works at IBA (Ion Beam Applications), the Belgian particle-accelerator and medical-technology company, as a Requirements & Verification (cybersecurity) expert.

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• Now a Requirements & Verification (cybersecurity) expert in IBA Clinical R&D in Brussels - a sharp pivot from academic biophysics to medical-device regulatory/security engineering2024
• Represented Costa Rica at IMO 2008 in Spain, winning a bronze medal (15 pts, rank 238); also IMO 2006 and 2007 with honourable mentions - a rare three-year streak for a Costa Rican contestantJul 2008
• Earned a PhD in Physics for the Life Sciences at Universite Grenoble Alpes (defended 14 Dec 2017) on plasmonic lab-on-fibre biosensors for remote label-free molecular analysis, supervised by Arnaud Buhot and Loic Leroy in the SyMMES/CREAB labDec 14, 2017
• A 2024 Elmea Consulting LinkedIn post thanks him alongside IBA product-risk expert Trung Truc Huynh for a medical-risk-management session, suggesting he is a recognized internal voice on IBA device risk/cybersecurity2024
• Named in La Nacion's 2008 coverage of Costa Rica's best-ever IMO delegation of six studentsJul 22, 2008
• Second-best score in the 2006 UCR admission exam (799.84 pts) as a Colegio Franco Costarricense student, opening his path to university in Costa Rica and later FranceDec 6, 2006
• Published plasmonic biosensor research (inverse-index-gradient fibre-optic SPR sensors; reviews on biosensor applications), a transition from pure maths talent to experimental biophotonics2017
• Born 1989 (IDRef/FIDE), placing him about 18 at IMO 2008 and about 28 at his 2017 PhD defense2020
• Registered with FIDE as a Costa Rican chess player (ID 6533337, b. 1989), a second competitive thread alongside olympiad mathematics2024