Dr. Ashfaq Shuaib received his undergraduate medical education at Khyber Medical College in Pakistan, obtaining his MBBS degree in 1980.Thereafter, he did post-graduate training in Internal Medicine and Neurology at the University of Calgary between 1983 and 1988, followed by specialized training in cerebrovascular research at the University of Western Ontario and Duke University Medical School in Durham, North Carolina.

He returned to Canada as an assistant professor in Medicine and Neurology at the University of Saskatchewan in 1989 and rose rapidly through the academic ranks to be appointed full professor in July 1995.In addition, he held the position of program director in the Division of Neurology between 1990 and 1995, supervised numerous research fellows and graduate students and was the Director of the Saskatchewan Stroke Research Centre and Director of the WHO Centre.

He joined the University of Alberta as Professor of Medicine and Director of the Division of Neurology September 1, 1997 - July 2007 and Director of the Stroke Program 1997 - 2024. His major interest is in the understanding of the basic mechanisms of cerebral ischemia and clinical trials in cerebrovascular diseases. He has published over 670 articles in peer-reviewed journals (H-index 85 CI 102,225) and his research is funded by the CIHR, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Alberta, NIH, Alberta Innovates and the industry. He is the co-chair of the NIH funded conference on collaterals and the stroke section of CONy. He has served on the editorial board of the Stroke, Neurohospitalist, J of Neuroscience (Pakistan), Post-Graduate Journal (Pakistan), Heart Org. and Associate Editor of Frontiers in Neuroscience and Faculty F-1000.