Ali Khademhosseini

Ali Khademhosseini (, born October 30, 1975, Tehran, Iran) is the CEO of the Terasaki Institute, non-profit research organization in Los Angeles, and Omeat Inc., a cultivated-meat startup. Before taking his current CEO roles, he spent one year at Amazon Inc. Prior to that he was the Levi Knight chair and professor at the University of California-Los Angeles where he held a multi-departmental professorship in Bioengineering, Radiology, Chemical, and Biomolecular Engineering as well as the Director of Center for Minimally Invasive Therapeutics (C-MIT). From 2005 to 2017, he was a professor at Harvard Medical School, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

He is an academic entrepreneur who has made contributions in biomaterials and regenerative medicine, particular for developing hydrogels for tissue engineering and bioprinting. He has started multiple companies, including Obsidio Inc. (sold to Boston Scientific) and Omeat Inc.

His studies have been cited over 131,000 times (H index = 185). By the number of citations, he is the most cited author of in various journals in the field of biomaterials like Biomaterials, Advanced Healthcare Materials, Biofabrication, Tissue Engineering - Part B: Reviews.

Background and personal life
Khademhosseini was born in Tehran, Iran, and grew up in Toronto, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in bioengineering from MIT under the supervision of Robert S. Langer (2005), and MASc (2001) and BASc (1999) degrees from the University of Toronto both in chemical engineering.

Accomplishments
Dr. Khademhosseini is a leader in developing ‘personalized’ solutions that utilize micro- and nanoscale technologies to enable a range of therapies for organ failure, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. For example, he has developed numerous techniques for controlling the behavior of patient-derived cells to engineer artificial tissues and cell-based therapies. He is also developing ‘organ-on-a-chip’ systems that mimic human physiology and pathology to enable patient-specific evaluation of drug candidates. In addition, his laboratory is utilizing biofabrication to form vascularized tissues with appropriate microarchitectures and regulate stem cell differentiation in microengineered environments. He has also developed various high-performance biomaterials for numerous applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. For example, he has developed and popularized gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) which has become one of the main materials for 3D bioprinting industry. He also developed electrically conductive, tunable hydrogels by mixing GelMA with nanomaterials, including gold nanoparticles and carbon-based nanomaterials. He has demonstrated the use of GelMA-based materials for tissue engineering and other clinical applications such as sealants and hemostats.

He has also made advancements in new 3D bioprinters. In one example, he has developed an innovative multi-nozzle, multi-material bioprinter. In another example, he has engineered stereolithography-based bioprinters. He has developed different bioinks for various tissue engineering applications.

Another area of focus has been on building multi-organ on-a-chip systems with integrated in-line sensors. Such devices are finding use in the next generation of organs on a chip systems. His early work in electrochemical biosensors with regeneration ability and microfluidic physical sensors allowed in-line monitoring of organs-on-a-chip platforms. He was also one of the pioneers of smart patches for chronic wound healing, where both sensing the wound and the rapid drug intervention was conducted using the same device. He has also made key contributions to vascularizing thick tissues with technologies including sacrificial molding, bioprinting, and microengineering.

He has edited multiple books/journal special issues and is an author on >700 peer-reviewed journal articles, editorials, review papers, >70 book chapters/edited books, and >50 patent/disclosure applications. His work has been published in leading journals and routinely highlighted in international media.

Translational efforts
Khademhosseini is an academic entrepreneur who has started multiple companies to translate the findings of his research into products. He combined silica nanoparticles with gelatin to engineer shear-thinning materials for the embolization of blood vessels in the peripheral vasculature. He then co-founded Obsidio Medical to pursue clinical applications of this breakthrough. The technology was approved by U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Obsidio Medical was acquired by Boston Scientific in August 2022.

He also founded Omeat Inc., aiming to produce cultivated meat in a scalable and affordable manner. Omeat is a vertically integrated meat company that also produces humane and cost effective fetal bovine serum replacement.

Awards and honors
Dr. Khademhosseini's interdisciplinary research has been recognized over 70 major national and international awards. He is a recipient of the 2011 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) by President Barack Obama, the highest honor given by the US government for early-career investigators. Khademhosseini is a recipient of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Outstanding Undergraduate mentor award. In 2007, he was named a TR35 recipient by the MIT Technology Review magazine as one of the world's top young innovators. In addition, he has received the young investigator awards of the Society for Biomaterials and the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society. He has also received the American Chemical Society's Viktor K. Lamer award and the Unilever award and has been recognized by major governmental Awards including the NSF Career award and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award.

In 2011, he received the Pioneers of Miniaturization Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry for his contribution to microscale tissue engineering and microfluidics. In 2016, he received the Sr. Scientist Award of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Society-Americas (TERMIS-AM) and in 2017 he received the Clemson Award of the Society for Biomaterials. In 2019, he received the Mustafa Prize, for his work on microfabricated hydrogel for biomedical applications.

He is a member of National Academy of Inventors, the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, Canadian Academy of Engineering as well as the Royal Society of Canada. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), Royal Society of Chemistry, Biomaterials Science and Engineering (FBSE), Materials Research Society (MRS), and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Sources & External links

 * Harvard-MIT faculty profile
 * TR35 profile
 * NanoQuebec
 * Regenerate tissue engineering conference
 * Lab on a Chip
 * U of T engineering speaker
 * Microengineering the cellular environment
 * Khademhosseini wins the Coulter Foundation Early Career Award
 * Scholarly works by Khademhosseini
 * HST faculty wins the BMW Scientific award