Ali Khademhosseini (Persian: علی خادم‌حسینی, born October 30, 1975) is an Iranian-born Canadian-American engineer and entrepreneur. He is currently the CEO and Director of the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation in Los Angeles, California.

Khademhosseini held a multi-departmental professorship at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he served as the Levi Knight Chair in Engineering and a professor in the departments of Bioengineering, Radiology, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He also served as the Director of the Center for Minimally Invasive Therapeutics (C-MIT) at UCLA.^[1]

Prior to joining UCLA, he was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a core faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering from 2005 to 2017.^[2] In addition to his academic roles, Khademhosseini briefly worked at Amazon Inc., contributing to biomedical technology initiatives during a one-year tenure.^[3]

Khademhosseini has published approximately 1,000 scientific articles, which have collectively been cited over 145,000 times. As of April 2025, his h-index is 196.^[4] His work spans biomaterials, tissue engineering, microfluidics, and biofabrication, with key contributions to the development of Gelatin Methacryloyl (GelMA) hydrogels and multi-organ-on-a-chip platforms.

In addition to his academic career, Khademhosseini is also active in technology translation and entrepreneurship. He has contributed to the development of commercial products in the biomedical space, including surgical sealants, wearable sensors, and embolic materials.^[5]

Khademhosseini was born in Tehran, Iran. His family migrated to Canada in 1987 and he grew up in Toronto, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in bioengineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Robert S. Langer (2005), and MASc (2001) and BSc (1999) degrees from the University of Toronto both in chemical engineering.^[6] He was first introduced to bioengineering by working as an undergraduate researcher in the laboratory of Michael Sefton who is a professor at University of Toronto^[7]. For his masters he worked in a joint project between the laboratory of Peter Zandstra and Sefton on stem cell bioengineering.

Ali Khademhosseini has contributed to the development of personalized biomedical technologies using micro- and nanoscale platforms for applications in organ failure, cardiovascular disease, and oncology.^[8][9] He played a key role in advancing the use of gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA)-based biomaterials in tissue engineering and clinical applications, including surgical sealants and hemostatic agents.^[10][11] GelMA is derived from gelatin that has been chemically modified to allow photocrosslinking, and it has gained widespread use due to its biocompatibility and biodegradability.^[12] Numerous studies have shown that various cell types maintain functionality when encapsulated in GelMA, and it has become a commonly used bioink for 3D biofabrication applications. Khademhosseini's team also developed conductive and tunable hydrogels by incorporating nanomaterials such as gold nanoparticles and carbon-based compounds into GelMA formulations.

He has also contributed to the development of multi-organ-on-a-chip platforms with integrated in-line sensors for real-time monitoring. These systems represent a next generation of organ-on-a-chip technologies with potential applications in drug testing and disease modeling. His earlier research included the development of electrochemical biosensors with regeneration capability, as well as physical microfluidic sensors for continuous biomonitoring within microphysiological systems.

Another area of innovation has been smart wound healing patches that integrate sensing and therapeutic functions within a single device.

Khademhosseini has also contributed to the design of hydrogel-based surgical materials, including bioadhesives and tissue sealants. Among these innovations is a shear-thinning embolic agent designed for vascular applications such as aneurysm treatment. This material combines nanosilicate (Laponite) with gelatin to form a hybrid nanocomposite, which adapts to the geometry of blood vessels during injection. The technology led to the commercial development of the Obsidio embolic material.

Khademhosseini is an academic entrepreneur who has started companies to translate the findings of his research into products. He co-founded Obsidio Medical to use a hydrogel made out of silicate nanoparticles with gelatin to engineer shear-thinning materials for the embolization of blood vessels in the peripheral vasculature. The technology was approved by U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Obsidio Medical was acquired by Boston Scientific in August 2022.^[13][14][15]

He also founded Omeat Inc., aiming to produce cultivated meat in a scalable and affordable manner.^[16][17] Omeat is a vertically integrated meat company that also produces humane and cost effective fetal bovine serum replacement.^[18]

Khademhosseini was on sabbatical in 2011 as a Harrington fellow at the University of Texas-Austin with Prof. Nicholas Peppas.^[19]

Khademhosseini was also affiliated with Tohoku University, WPI - AIMR program in Sendai, Japan.

In 2019 and early 2020 he was on sabbatical at Amazon Inc. in Seattle.

Khademhosseini is a recipient of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Outstanding Undergraduate mentor award.^[20] Numerous of his trainees have gone to academia as faculty at institutions including Harvard University-Massachusetts General Hospital (Adam Hacking), Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Shrike Zhang, SuRyon Shin), University of California-Riverside (Iman Noshadi, Ian Wheeldon), University of California-Los Angeles (Nasim Annabi), Arizona State University (Mehdi Nikkhah), Penn State University (Amir Sheikhi), Johns Hopkins University (Amir Manbachi), Texas A&M (Akhilesh Gaharwar), University of Pittsburgh (Shilpa Sant), NJIT (Amir Miri), INSERM, Northeastern University (Nasim Annabi), University of Sydney (Lifeng Kang, Chun Xu), University of Maryland (Ryan Sochol), Maastricht University, Korea University (Hanjun Kim), Hanyang University, National University of Singapore, and Tsinghua University (Yanan Du).^[21]

Khademhosseini's interdisciplinary research has been recognized over 70 major national and international awards.^[22]He is a recipient of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Outstanding Undergraduate mentor award.^[23] He has also received the American Chemical Society's Viktor K. Lamer award,^[24] the Unilever award,^[24] and has been recognized by major governmental Awards including the and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award.^[25]

Selected Awards

• Materials Research Society Mid Career Research Award (2025)^[26]
• AICHE Acrivos Award for Professional Progress (2024)^[27]
• Biomaterials Global Impact Award (2024)^[28]
• Technology Innovation and Development Award - Society for Biomaterials (2024)^[29]
• Research.com Best Scientist Award (2022, 2023, 2024)^[30]
• Research.com Materials Science in United States Leader Award (2023, 2024)^[30][31]
• Thompson Reuters - Highly Cited Researcher (every year from 2014 through 2024)^[32][33]
• Biotechnology Progress award for Excellence in Publication (2022)^[34][35]
• Mustafa Prize (2019)^[36][37]
• Acta Biomaterialia Silver Medal (2018) ^[38]
• Clemson Award of the Society for Biomaterials (2017)^[39]
• Sr. Scientist Award of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Society-Americas (TERMIS-AM) (2017) ^[40]
• Pioneers of Miniaturization Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry (2016)^[41]
• IEEE EMBS William J. Morlock Award (2016)^[42]
• AIChE Nanoscale Science & Engineering Forum Young Investigator Award (2014)^[43]
• International Union of Materials Research Societies (IUMRS) Singapore Young Researcher Award (2014)^[44][45][46]
• ACS Kavli Foundation Emerging Leader in Chemistry (2014)^[47]
• 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 (2011)^[48]
• Young investigator award, Society for Biomaterials (2008)^[39]
• TR35 Award by MIT Technology Review as one of the world's top young innovators (2007)^[49]
• Young investigator award, Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society.^[40]

Fellowships and Membership in Societies

• Fellow, National Academy of Inventors^[50]
• Fellow, International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering^[51]
• Fellow, Canadian Academy of Engineering^[52]
• Fellow, Royal Society of Canada^[53]
• Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)^[54]
• Fellow, Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES)^[55]
• Fellow, Royal Society of Chemistry
• Fellow of Biomaterials Science and Engineering (FBSE)^[56]
• Fellow, Materials Research Society (MRS)^[57]
• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)^[58]
• Sr Member, IEEE ^[59]

• 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