Mo Khalil awarded the 2026 Kuwait Prize

Mo Khalil, the Hok Lam and Kathleen Kam Wong Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology has been awarded the 2026 Kuwait Prize from The Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS). 

Founded in 1976, KFAS funds and implements research, training, and development programs that address Kuwait’s national priorities in the fields of science, technology, and innovation. The Kuwait Prize is given annually to distinguished Kuwaiti and Arab scientists around the world for significant and outstanding achievements in research.

Khalil, who is Palestinian-Jordanian, was honored for his work in synthetic and systems biology.

Khalil’s work focuses on developing synthetic biology tools to better understand how complex cellular systems work, and to design synthetic ones that enable new and useful biological functions. Khalil joined SEAS from Boston University in 2025, where his lab’s work made fundamental contributions into the biological circuits that control gene regulation and epigenetic memory, and pioneered synthetic circuit technologies for translational medicine, enabling the design of programmable cellular therapies to treat cancer and other diseases. In addition, his lab invented novel continuous evolution technologies, such as the eVOLVER, which are being used to generate biomolecules with new and improved functions to address unmet needs in  biology, medicine, and biotechnology.

Khalil received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at MIT, where he was awarded a Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Graduate Fellowship. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Chemistry.