Khaira Ismail is a lecturer of Faculty Science and Marine Environment, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, Malaysia. She receives her PhD degree from the University of Southampton, United Kingdom in Ocean & Earth Science.

Her primary research interest revolves around marine habitat mapping work ranging from ultra-shallow to deep-sea environment. Her research combines a multidisciplinary approach including marine geology, sedimentology, ecology, geophysics, remote sensing, geospatial & geostatistics and GIS. Her work mostly to support marine spatial management in Malaysia. With her background, she is appointed as one of the scientific advisory committees to develop seabed mining law in Malaysia. She has participated in international expeditions at sea and involved in survey planning for acquiring geophysical data, geology and biological baseline environmental data. Projects that she is currently involves in are: 1) Development of habitat and seafloor mapping recommended operating guidelines to support marine park management in Malaysia 2) Working group of climate change consideration in environmental management planning for deep-sea mining 3) Deep imaging of submarine groundwater systems offshore the island of Hawai'i. Apart from her research interest, she serves as the academic committee developing the Bachelor of Science in Marine Geoscience in Universiti Malaysia Terengganu and coordinator for the undergraduate and postgraduate module in Geological Oceanography.