Dr Sharif Ismail is a NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in Public Health Medicine, and a Specialist Registrar in Public Health. He divides his time between academic research at Imperial and service public health work - most recently in health protection at Public Health England.

His academic interests lie primarily in health policy and systems research in the UK and internationally, with a special focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Previous work has included analyses of the role of system-level factors in determining presentations at, and unscheduled admissions from, Accident & Emergency departments in England and Wales. He has a particular interest currently in understanding how health systems adapt (or otherwise) to acute and chronic stressors arising from armed conflict - including large-scale population movements. The main contexts for this work are the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

Before qualifying in medicine, he worked in policy analysis for RAND Europe, the Institute for Government, and the Nuffield Trust.