Ali Khademhosseini


Ali Khademhosseini is an Iranian-born Canadian-American engineer and entrepreneur.
Khademhosseini was the CEO of the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation in Los Angeles, California. Before that he held a multi-departmental professorship at the University of California, Los Angeles, 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 at UCLA. He was principal scientist at Amazon during his transition between UCLA to TIBI.
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. In addition to his academic roles, Khademhosseini briefly worked at Amazon Inc., contributing to biomedical technology initiatives during a one-year tenure.
Khademhosseini has published approximately 1,000 scientific articles, which have collectively been cited over 157,000 times. As of January 2026, his h-index is 205. His work spans biomaterials, tissue engineering, microfluidics, and biofabrication, with key contributions to the development of Gelatin Methacryloyl 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.
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Early life and education

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, and MASc and BSc degrees from the University of Toronto both in chemical engineering. He was first introduced to bioengineering by working as an undergraduate researcher in the laboratory of who is a professor at University of Toronto. For his masters he worked in a joint project between the laboratory of Peter Zandstra and Sefton on stem cell bioengineering.

Contributions to Biomedical Innovation

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. He played a key role in advancing the use of gelatin methacryloyl -based biomaterials in tissue engineering and clinical applications, including surgical sealants and hemostatic agents. 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. 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 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.

Translational efforts

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.
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.

Other appointments and international interactions

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

Training and Notable students

Khademhosseini is a recipient of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Outstanding Undergraduate mentor award. Numerous of his trainees have gone to academia as faculty at institutions including Harvard University-Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, University of California-Riverside, University of California-Los Angeles, Arizona State University, Penn State University, Johns Hopkins University, Texas A&M, University of Pittsburgh, NJIT, INSERM, Northeastern University, University of Sydney, University of Maryland, Maastricht University, Korea University, Hanyang University, National University of Singapore, and Tsinghua University.

Awards and honors

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