Featured Speaker
Dr. Ishmail Abdus-Saboor
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Columbia University – Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute
New York City, NY
This in-depth scientific research presentation and discussion on the featured speaker’s latest findings will provide scholars with an experience of how faculty members share and teach about novel knowledge in their fields.
This portion of the seminar is accessible to both scholars and Department of Anesthesiology members, and all will be given the opportunity to ask questions after the talk if desired.
About Dr. Ishmail Abdus-Saboor:
Dr. Abdus-Saboor received a B.S. at North Carolina A&T University in 2006 and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Weill Cornell Medicine and University of Pennsylvania from 2012-2018. He then served on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania from 2018-2021 as the Mitchell J. and Margo Krody Blutt Presidential Assistant Professor of Biology. Dr. Abdus-Saboor recently joined Columbia University in 2021 as an Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.
Dr. Abdus-Saboor’s lab aims at tackling multiple questions including on pain, nociception and soft touch. How does the nervous system encode a soft gentle caress versus a harsh painful stimulation? What are the molecules and cells along the neuroanatomical highway from skin to brain, that informs the brain about what the skin is feeling? To address these questions Dr. Abdus-Saboor’s lab uses systems neuroscience and molecular biology to link animal behavior with genes and neural circuits. Using fast imaging, computation, mathematics and artificial intelligence in freely behaving mice, his lab develops platforms to distinguish between the sensory and emotional states of pain. His lab also aims to determine how the brain and genome control the biological basis of individual sensitivity to pain.
Along his career, Dr. Abdus-Saboor’s received many prestigious grants including the Rita Allen Foundation Scholar in Pain Research, published over 19 peer-reviewed articles, and given over 100 invited research talks. He has been invited to participate in. grant application review committees, organize and chair international conferences, and reviews for multiple outstanding scientific journals in the fields of pain and neuroscience.
In addition to his prestigious journey as an academic, Dr. Abdus-Saboor is dedicated to promoting science outreach and equity in STEM fields. He worked as an organizer for URM interns at Penn “Grad School admission process” and co-directed the Mentoring Circle Program for URM students at University of Pennsylvania. It is without a doubt that Dr. Abdus-Saboor will lead the next generations of scientists toward a successful and brighter path.