Ikbal is a final year Ph.D. candidate working with Dr. Sean Sun in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. His primary research interest is mechanics of trans-epithelial fluid pumping at a tissue scale. Ikbal is a published scientist and inventor with scientific papers and patents (approved and pending) on a wide variety of topics, including the fabrication of self-healing polymeric materials, low-cost blood pressure monitoring wearable devices, measuring stiffness of cancer cells, and developing organ-chips to study genetically inherited diseases.