Mustapha Ishak(-Boushaki), Professor of Physics and Astrophysics

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Education and employment

Ph.D. in Cosmology and General Relativity at Queen's University at Kingston, Canada (2002).

Research Associate in Cosmology at Princeton University, New Jersey, USA (2002-2005).

Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, USA (2005-present).


For my Curriculum Vitae (May 2022) click here.

For a picture gallery of random pictures of my family (outdated!): click here.

Professional recognitions and honors

2024 Piper Professor of Texas Statewide Outstanding Teaching Award → More here ←

2023 Provost's Award for Faculty Excellence in Graduate Research Mentoring at the University of Texas at Dallas → More here ←

2022 Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) with quote: "For distinguished contributions to the field of theoretical cosmology, particularly for testing modifications to general relativity at cosmological scales, and for sustained excellence in teaching and mentoring of students."

2022 UT System Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award, University of Texas System → More here ←

2021 Elected Fellow of the American Association of Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) → More here ←

2021 President's Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Texas at Dallas → More here ←

2020 Granted Builder Status for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time - Dark Energy Science Collaboration. Among 37 recognized members over 1100 members.

2018-2019 Invited review article in the prestigious Living Reviews in Relativity journal to cover the topic of "Testing General Relativity at Cosmological Scales." Living Reviews in Relativity 22 (2019) 1-204. arXiv:1806.10122.

2018 Award for Outstanding Teacher of the Year from the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. University of Texas at Dallas → More here ←

2013 Robert S. Hyer Award for Excellence in Research from the Texas Section of the American Physics Society. Jointly with Michael Troxel.

Journal paper highlighted at Physical Review Letters as Editors' suggestion and selected for a synopsis in Spotlighting Exceptional Research in Physics website of the American Physical Society. "Stringent Restriction from the Growth of Large-Scale Structure on Apparent Acceleration in Inhomogeneous Cosmological Models", Mustapha Ishak, Austin Peel, and M. A. Troxel. Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 251302 (2013).

2007 Award for Outstanding Teacher of the Year from the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. University of Texas at Dallas

Journal paper selected by Chief Editor Gerardus 't Hooft (Nobel Laureate in Physics 1999) to appear in the highlights of 2008 of the Foundation of Physics Journal. Article title: Remarks on the formulation of the cosmological constant/dark energy questions. Mustapha Ishak. Foundation of physics Journal, 37:1470-1498,2007.

Journal Paper voted by the Editorial Board of Classical and Quantum Gravity Journal as one of the journal's highlights of 2002. Article title: Interactive Geometric Database, Including Exact Solutions of Einstein's Field Equations, Mustapha Ishak and Kayll Lake, Classical and Quantum Gravity 19, 505 (2002).

2002-2004 Postdoctoral Fellowship for Excellence in Research and Leadership from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)

Bio for invited talks and event announcements:

Mustapha Ishak is a theoretical astrophysicist and Professor of Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Texas at Dallas. He completed his Ph.D. degree with distinction in 2002 at Queen's University in Canada in General Relativity and Cosmology, and received the prestigious fellowship of the Research Council of Canada. After that, he joined Princeton University as a researcher in the fields of cosmology, before joining UT-Dallas as a faculty in 2005, where he has been since. His scientific work has been disseminated in over 100 publications with nearly 8000 citations. Mustapha Ishak provided seminal work on testing gravity at cosmological scales, constraining possible causes of cosmic acceleration, constraining cosmological models, and intrinsic alignment of galaxies as an astrophysical systematic effect in weak gravitational lensing. Mustapha Ishak was elected as Fellow of the American Association of Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) and the American Physical Society with quote: "For distinguished contributions to the field of theoretical cosmology, particularly for testing modifications to general relativity at cosmological scales, and for sustained excellence in teaching and mentoring of students." He received in 2007 and 2018, the Outstanding Teaching Award from the Natural Sciences and Mathematics School, and in 2021, the President's Teaching Excellence Award at UT-Dallas, the Provost's Award for Faculty Excellence in Graduate Research Mentoring in 2023, the Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award for University of Texas System in 2022 and the Texas Statewide Piper Outstanding Teaching Award in 2025. Mustapha Ishak is an active member and leader in the Legacy Survey of Space and Time - Dark Energy Science Collaboration (LSST-DESC) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey collaboration. These two international collaborations will revolutionize our understating of the universe, gravity, and cosmic acceleration. He is co-lead of the DESI Working Group that led the cosmological analysis that provided the most remarkable results about Dark Energy and Cosmic Acceleration. In 2002, one of his publications was voted by the Editorial Board of Classical and Quantum Gravity as one of the journal's highlights of the year. In 2008, one of his publications was selected by Nobel Laureate Gerardus't Hooft to be on the Chief Editor List of the Foundation of Physics Journal. In 2013, his publication in Physical Review Letters was selected by the editors to be highlighted in Spotlighting Exceptional Research in Physics website of the American Physical Society. In 2019, he published an extensive invited review (204 pages) on Testing General Relativity in Cosmology in the prestigious Living Reviews in Relativity Journal. Mustapha Ishak delivered over 100 invited plenary and public talks including the 2019 Opening Plenary Talk of the International Conference of the 100th anniversary of the 1919 Solar Eclipse expedition and experiment that confirmed the Theory of General Relativity of Einstein. He also derivered on April 4th, 2024, a memorable invited talk at the American Physical Society Meeting on behalf of DESI the entire collaboration to annouce the famous result that Dark Energy is evolving in time that was echoed all around the world.

My publications and social media pages:

For a partial list of my papers at INSPIRE HEP server click here.

For a partial list of my papers at NASA ADS server click here.

For some of my YouTube videos click here.

For my linkedin click here.

For my twitter page click here.

For my personal facebook page click here.

A recent video-interview at UT-Dallas about research and teaching with special advice to students:

Chronological brief biosketch:

I am a Cosmologist and Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. My recent research projects and interests are in Physical Cosmology, Gravitational Lensing, and General Relativity (see next section).  I am involved in theoretical, numerical, and data-related projects. I am a leading member of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Collaboration where I co-chair the Cosmological Parameter Estimation Working Group that conducted the recent DESI cosmological Analyses and their remarkable results. I am also a leading member of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) working mainly within the Theory-Joint-Probes (TJP) and the Weak Lensing (WL) groups.

I completed my Ph.D. in 2002 in Cosmology and General Relativity with Prof. Kayll Lake at the Physics Department at Queen's University at Kingston in Canada. My graduate work included investigations in inhomogeneous cosmological models and Exact Solutions to Einstein's Equations; an inverse approach to Einstein's equations; oscillation modes in compact astrophysical objects; and matching spacetimes using junction conditions leading to Wormwholes and thin shells.

Then, I joined the Physics Department at Princeton University as a Postdoctoral Researcher where I worked on projects in physical cosmology, cosmic acceleration and gravitational lensing with Prof. Steinhardt, Prof. Seljak and other researchers. After that, I worked as a Research Associate at the Astrophysical Sciences Department at Princeton in collaboration with Prof. Spergel and other researchers on cosmic acceleration and testing gravity at cosmological scales. While there, I organized the Princeton & IAS Gravitational Lensing Seminar and  taught (as preceptor with lecturer appointments) at the Physics Department (Physics 103) and the Astrophysics Department (Astro 203).

In 2005, I started a professorship position at the Department of Physics at the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas). I discovered that a real thirst for Cosmology and Astrophysics exists within the students at UT Dallas and also the general public in the Dallas Metroplex Area, so I launched a number of initiatives and activities in response to that. Over the years, I formed a Cosmology, Astrophysics and Relativity Group that now counts 5 faculty and ~20 graduate students.

I also developed software packages with collaborators including (as lead developper) the Interactive Geometric Database of Exact Solutions of Einstein's Field Equations (GRDB), and later on the package called ISiTGR (Integrated Software in Testing General Relativity) that is an integrated set of modified modules for the software package CosmoMC for use in testing whether observational data is consistent with general relativity on cosmological scales. The most recent version is available on the Github repository: Click here for ISiTGR repository.

The courses I taught at UT-Dallas include undergraduate courses PHYS2325 Mechanics, PHYS3312 Classical Mechanics, PHYS4V89 Cosmology, PHYS1100 Fun of Physics, and graduate courses: PHYS5303 Math Methods for Physics III, PHYS5395 Cosmology, PHYS5311 Classical Mechanics, PHYS5391 Special Relativity, and PHYS5392 General Relativity. Over the years, I received the following teachings awards: 2024 Piper Professor of Texas Statewide Outstanding Teaching Award → More here ←; 2023 Provost's Award for Faculty Excellence in Graduate Research Mentoring at the University of Texas at Dallas → More here ←; 2022 UT System Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award, University of Texas System → More here ←; 2021 President's Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Texas at Dallas → More here ←; 2018 Award for Outstanding Teacher of the Year from the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. University of Texas at Dallas → More here ←; 2013 Robert S. Hyer Award for Excellence in Research from the Texas Section of the American Physics Society. Jointly with Michael Troxel; 2007 Award for Outstanding Teacher of the Year from the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. University of Texas at Dallas; For a detailed list of my course teaching (until 2015) click here..

My research work received funding from NASA, DOE, NSF, private foundations and corporate sector.

I served as proposal reviewer for NSF, NASA, the Research Foundation of Canada, CONICYT Chile, The Foundation of Polish Science, The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, and the Texas Space Grant Consortium. I serve regularly as referee for Physical Review Letters, Physical Review D, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Classical and Quantum Gravity, Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomy Society, General Relativity and Gravitation, Euro-Physics Letters and Physics Letters B. I served on the UTDallas senate for 9 years and participated or chaired over 20 university or school committees. I co-chaired the local and scientific organizing committees of the 27th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics. The symposium received 470 participants, over 300 talks in 49 parallel sessions; 24 plenary and review talks, and a public lecture attended by over 1300 people. More info and the online proceedings are available at http://nsm.utdallas.edu/texas2013. I manage and organize the activities and expansions of our Cosmology, Astrophysics and Relativity Group at UT Dallas.

Doctoral Genealogy:

Mustapha Ishak - Kayll W. Lake - Robert C. Roeder - George C. McVittie - Arthur S. Eddington
(Credit for reconstructing this genealogy goes to Prof. Kayll Lake)