Dr. Bishai received his MD and PhD degrees from Harvard Medical School in 1989. He did his internship and residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and received fellowship training in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He was a Howard Hughes Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the laboratory of Nobel laureate, Dr. Hamilton Smith. He joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 1994 and is currently a Professor of Medicine in the Dept. of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and serves as Co-Director for the JHU Center for Tuberculosis Research. From 2010-2013 Dr. Bishai served as the founding Director of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)-funded KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-RITH) in Durban, South Africa, where he supervised the construction of a $40 M research building and recruited seven world-class scientists to its faculty.

Dr. Bishai’s interests involve tuberculosis pathogenesis, and animal models of pulmonary infections, and bacterial respiratory tract infections. His work in South Africa led to new projects on the genomics of the M/XDR-TB strains, small molecule biomarkers in human tissue and T cell immunology of TB in the peripheral blood and lung compartments of humans. He has authored over 250 papers in peer reviewed journals, and receives grant support from the National Institutes of Health. He has given extensive service on international conference planning committees, study sections, editorial boards, and review panels including 3 years on the WHO Stop TB Partnership Coordinating Board.