al-Issa was born in 1949 in
Najaf, Iraq. He studied
chemistry at the
University of Basra in 1971 and received his doctorate from
University of Liverpool in 1979. He served as president of the University of Kufa from 2006 until 2011 and in 2015 became a consultant to the Minister of Higher Education "
Hussain al-Shahristani". In April 2016, Minister
Haider al-Abadi to the government of technocrats to assume the post of Ministry of Higher Education and in August 2016 was approved in the Iraqi parliament to take office. ==References==