Ishmail is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. He is also a Freeman Hrabowski Scholar at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received a B.S. degree in animal science from North Carolina A&T State University in 2006 and a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012, where he was supervised by Prof. Meera Sundaram. He completed postdoctoral training at Weill Cornell, then University of Pennsylvania, supervised by Profs. Ben Shykind and Wenqin Luo. He joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in the Biology Department in 2018 as the Mitchell and Margo Blutt Presidential Assistant Professor. He was recruited to Columbia University in 2021 and promoted to Associate Professor in 2023. Ishmail’s research focuses on bridging the body and brain to discover mechanisms that control somatosensory behaviors. In addition, each fall semester Ishmail teaches a large undergraduate course on cell and molecular neurobiology.

Selected Honors and Awards

2024      One Mind Rising Star Award
2023      Young Investigator Award, Society for Neuroscience
2023      HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholar
2023      McKnight Scholar Award
2022      NIH New Innovator Award
2022      Chan Zuckerberg Science Diversity Leadership Award
2022      Pew Biomedical Scholar
2021      Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow
2021      Kavli Fellow, National Academy of Sciences
2020     Rita Allen Foundation Scholar
2018      Mitchell Max Award for Excellence in Pain Research
2017      NIH Pathway to Independence Award
2015      Burroughs Wellcome Fund PDEP Fellow
2014      NIH IRACDA PennPORT Fellow
2012      Tom Kadesch Prize in Genetics

Q and A interview of Ishmail (Quanta Magazine, 2024)

Q and A interview of Ishmail (Neuron, 2021)