Ayesha Ishaq, MS
PhD Student in Environmental Sciences
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, Houston campus
Ayesha Ishaq, MS, is a PhD student in Environmental Sciences at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. She brings more than seven years of professional experience across Fortune 500 organizations, natural resource management, geospatial analytics, and global mining research. Her technical background includes advanced GIS data analysis, remote sensing, LiDAR classification, wetland delineation, and environmental data integration.
She has supported emergency operations during more than 23 major storms in Arkansas, providing outage visualization, spatial risk assessment, and mapping support for engineering and response teams. Ayesha’s public health interests center on environmental exposures, climate‑related health risks, and how extreme heat interacts with land‑surface characteristics, infrastructure, and community vulnerability, particularly in communities facing disproportionate exposure burdens. As a Lead Graduate Teaching Assistant during her master’s program, she enjoyed working closely with student in GIS and remote sensing and conducted research on hydrological change detection and drought‑driven lake dynamics.
She is an active member of the Association of American Geographers, the Pakistan Association of Petroleum Geoscientists, and Women in STEM. Previously, she was involved in the Data Science and Geography Clubs at South Dakota State University and served as co-chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Employee Resource Group. Outside of research, Ayesha enjoys tennis, hiking, and Zumba.