Dr. Ishmail Abdus-Saboor

One Mind-Kicking the Stigma Rising Star Award

Activating Neurons in the Skin to Relieve Symptoms of Chronic Stress. Columbia University.

Under Dr. Abdus-Saboor’s leadership, the lab has advanced the understanding of how touch and pain are encoded from body to brain, using innovative mapping techniques that are shaping new approaches to sensory disorders.

Dr. Ishmail Abdus-Saboor is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and a Freeman Hrabowski Scholar at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology from the University of Pennsylvania and completed postdoctoral research at Weill Cornell and Penn, studying under Profs. Ben Shykind and Wenqin Luo. His lab investigates how the nervous system encodes somatosensory experiences such as touch and pain, using cutting-edge tools to map body-to-brain signaling. Previously a Blutt Presidential Assistant Professor at Penn, Dr. Abdus-Saboor joined Columbia’s faculty in 2021 and earned tenure in 2025. He also teaches a popular undergraduate course on cell and molecular neurobiology each fall.