Ahmad (Mo) Khalil
أحمد (مو) خليل
Born: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Domain: Science & Medicine
Recognition: GLOBAL
Biography
Ahmad S. Khalil, known professionally as Mo Khalil, is a Palestinian-American bioengineer and one of the leading figures in the field of synthetic biology. Born in the Middle East to Palestinian-Jordanian parents and raised partly in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he immigrated to the United States in 1989. Trained originally in mechanical engineering, he was drawn to synthetic biology by its potential to engineer and reprogram living systems. Khalil is the Dorf-Ebner Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University and a founding associate director of the university's Biological Design Center. He is also an associate faculty member at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. His laboratory designs synthetic gene circuits and engineered cellular systems, with applications ranging from understanding fundamental biology to combating antibiotic resistance and developing new biotechnologies. His research has earned major recognition. He was awarded the prestigious Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2020, one of the most competitive individual research awards in the United States, and in 2026 he received the Kuwait Prize, a leading pan-Arab honor for scientific achievement. He has also held a Schmidt Science Polymath award and other fellowships supporting high-risk, high-reward research. Khalil's work on building synthetic transcriptional and memory circuits in yeast and other organisms has been widely cited and has influenced the broader development of programmable biology. He is recognized as a mentor to a new generation of synthetic biologists and bioengineers. As a scientist of Palestinian heritage at the forefront of an emerging discipline, Khalil represents the contemporary diaspora's contribution to cutting-edge engineering biology and the bridging of Arab scientific talent with leading American research institutions.
Why This Person Matters
A leading Palestinian-American synthetic biologist whose engineered gene circuits and Vannevar Bush and Kuwait Prize honors place him at the frontier of programmable biology.