Dr. Ismail is a Fulbright scholar with a Ph.D. from the Ohio State University, USA in 1998. Prior to joining NU, Prof Ismail was at the American University of Sharjah (AUS) and King Abdul-Aziz University (Jeddah). He taught at MSA, MUST, Cairo University and served as Department Chair at Fayoum University. He has worked extensively in local and international planning projects including the UNDP, the Swiss Development Fund and the World Bank. He was awarded several post-doctoral scholarships including DAAD Deutsche Academic Exchange Junior Scientist Grant (Germany), the Erasmus Mundus EU Fellowship in ITC (Holland), and with the Chinese government in (Wuhan). He teaches Quantitative Methods at NU with research in GIS.