OIST Graduate Accepts Faculty Appointment at Harvard Medical School

Dr. Faisal Mahmood, an OIST graduate has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. His appointment will be in the Division of Computational Pathology, a new division in the Department of Pathology, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an affiliated teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.  The goal of Faisal’s new research laboratory will be to develop image analysis tools and algorithms to help clinicians rapidly and accurately assess disease. The broad mandate of the Division of Computational Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital is to develop and apply advanced computational methods for furthering the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of human diseases.

“I am very excited to be joining the Division of Computational Pathology at the Brigham and the Pathology faculty at Harvard. I owe a lot of the success I had during my postdoctoral work to the training and mentoring I received at OIST. I am especially thankful to Prof. Ulf Skoglund for his continued support, encouragement and advice during and after my Ph.D.,” said Faisal.

Faisal is a member of the first class of OIST graduate students that arrived in September 2012.  He completed his doctoral thesis research titled “Algorithmic and Architectural Developments for Cryo-Electron Tomography” in the Structural Cellular Biology Unit led by Professor Ulf Skoglund.  At OIST he developed new means of reconstructing tomographic cryo electron micrographic images with novel mathematical analyses and computational software and hardware.  In particular, he implemented the mathematical image reconstruction analyses in an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) reconfigurable computing system, which greatly reduces computational time and cost, and which is developing as a major new technology.  His work at OIST led to two patent applications, both of which has already been awarded as a U.S. patent.

After completing his PhD thesis research at OIST in 2017, Faisal became a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University with Nicholas Durr in the Department of Biomedical Engineering Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design. There he continued his work in optical engineering and computational, imaging and contributed to important progress in detecting colorectal cancer. He has published over 10 papers in image processing, high performance computing, machine learning and biomedical instrumentation.

Professor Skoglund, who is also Dean of the Graduate School at OIST, commented, “We feel very proud of Faisal’s professional achievements and extremely happy about his personal success. His faculty appointment also shows that the very dedicated studies and research of students at OIST are highly competitive at a top international level.”

OIST President Peter Gruss praised Dr. Mahmood on his outstanding success stating, “I am extremely proud of Faisal’s accomplishments, and extend my heartfelt congratulations to him on his appointment as Assistant Professor at Harvard. His success reflects his undeniable talent as a research scientist and attests to the high quality of education and training provided by OIST’s graduate program.”

OIST will celebrate the achievements of graduates from the 2018 Academic Year at its second graduation ceremony on May 25^th, 2019.

Dr. Faisal Mahmood has  accepted a position as Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. His appointment will be in the Pathology Department, Division of Computational Pathology, a new division in the Department of Pathology, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an affiliated teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. He is one of the first graduates from OIST in 2017.

Dr. Faisal Mahmood