Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Isma has recently joined the Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). She graduated Bachelor of Biomedical Sciences (Honours) from UKM in 2006 and then worked in the Ministry of Health, Malaysia (2008-2013). She was conferred a PhD (Anatomy) from the National University of Ireland (NUI), Galway, in 2017. She did her post-doctorate research in SFI Research Centre for Medical Devices (CÚRAM), NUI Galway (2017-2020), and the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology UKM (2021). Dr Isma has expertise in intervertebral disc and biomaterial research. Her work focuses on degenerative disc disease, specifically to modulate inflammatory pain, extracellular matrix regulation, disc microstructure, and molecular, proteome and glycome profiling in disc degeneration using a biomaterial approach. Dr Isma has been involved in disease modelling to establish a pre-clinical model of pain induced by disc injury. She is also developing a bioengineered hydrogel to support stem cell transplantation for disc regeneration targeting inflammatory pain. She plans to advance her research towards a patient-specific regenerative therapy using precision medicine and biomaterial-based tissue engineering. Her major achievements include the patent filed of the technology to promote disc regeneration targeting pain and the recipient of prestigious awards, including Julia Polak European Doctorate Award from the European Society for Biomaterials and First Prize Young Researcher Award from AO Spine. She has authored/co-authored numerous publications in high-impact journals, including Science Advances, PNAS, Biomaterials, and Advanced Science. Dr Isma is also a reviewer for peer-reviewed journals and actively presented her work at tier-one international conferences includes World Biomaterials Congress, World Forum for Spine Research, and Orthopaedic Research Society.