As Vice President of Scientific Education and Training at Memorial Sloan Kettering, Ushma oversees the academic curriculum for pre- and postdoctoral researchers who train in laboratories across MSK. Ushma's areas of focus include enhancing the career and professional development opportunities available to trainees as well as designing courses in areas such as rigor and transparency, statistics, computational biology, and imaging.

A passionate advocate for scientific communication, Ushma is also deeply committed to developing platforms that allow trainees to enhance the efficacy of their communications to fellow scientists and to the lay public. 

Ushma's graduate education began at Northwestern University where she studied pulmonary mechanics and mathematical modeling. After completing her doctoral degree in biomedical engineering, she used a Marshall Scholarship to study vascular permeability as a postdoctoral fellow at Imperial College London.  

After her postdoc, Ushma spent two years as a manuscript editor at Nature Medicine, and then joined the Journal of Clinical Investigation as Executive Editor. During her nine years in this role, she led academic editorial boards at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and Duke University/University of North Carolina in identifying, soliciting, and peer reviewing high-quality manuscripts. She also oversaw the writing, commissioning, and editing of front matter, including Editorials, News, Commentaries, Reviews, and Perspectives.

Ushma first came to MSK in 2012 as Director of the Office of the President, serving as the Chief of Staff to President and CEO Craig B. Thompson. In this role, she worked closely with Dr. Thompson and other MSK leadership, to shape and manage a strategic agenda. 

Ushma continues to serve as Editor-at-Large for the JCI,acting as the chief interviewer for the JCI video series “Conversations with Giants in Medicine.”