These three distinguished researchers bring their expertise in synthetic biology, materials science, and genome research to contribute to the Institute’s mission of societal impact
By Jessica Leff
The Wyss Institute is proud to welcome three new Associate Faculty members: Ahmad (Mo) Khalil, Ph.D., Jarad Mason, Ph.D., and Chao-ting (Ting) Wu, Ph.D. Each has a history of collaborating with the Institute’s researchers. Their diverse expertise and fresh perspectives will further strengthen the Wyss’ innovative and collaborative ecosystem and enable pioneering advances in support of the Institute’s mission of improving the health of people and the planet.
Ahmad (Mo) Khalil
Ahmad (Mo) Khalil is the Hok Lam and Kathleen Kam Wong Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. As the co-founder of K2 Therapeutics and Fynch Biosciences, Khalil has had a strong interest in translating his work.
Khalil’s research is focused on synthetic and systems biology. His laboratory is learning how to design and build biological systems that recreate the complexity of Nature. This led them to pioneer synthetic biology tools and approaches able to control gene regulation in eukaryotes with the goal of developing programmable cellular therapies for cancer and other diseases and understanding transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of biological systems. More recently, Khalil began tackling environmental problems, aiming to transform plant biological research and engineer plants to address issues of food security and global sustainability.
Khalil obtained his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and his master’s degree and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Then, he became a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Founding Associate Director of the Biological Design Center at Boston University (BU). Khalil is the recipient of numerous awards for excellence in research and teaching, including a Schmidt Science Polymath Award, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), NIH New Innovator Award, NSF CAREER Award, and DARPA Young Faculty Award.
While at BU, Khalil became a Visiting Scholar at the Wyss Institute in 2014, where, among other activities, he extensively collaborated with Wyss Institute Core Faculty member James Collins, Ph.D. At that time, his lab was using synthetic biology to develop rapid diagnostics for antibiotic resistance and synthetic gene circuits for eukaryotic cells. He explains, “The Wyss technology development teams brought tremendous experience and knowledge in diagnostics and their translation.”
As an Associate Faculty member, Khalil is excited to expand his engagement with other Wyss researchers, particularly for the development of synthetic biology platforms for the precise control of cellular therapies, to address bottlenecks in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. At the Wyss, he also aims to apply new genome engineering and synthetic biology platforms to plant science and to discover and advance therapeutically relevant biomolecules.
Jarad Mason
Jarad Mason is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences at the Harvard Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. His group is pioneering and applying new tools based on advances in coordination chemistry, materials science, and nanotechnology to address fundamental scientific challenges in medicine, energy, and sustainability. By developing chemical strategies to manipulate basic physical features, such as entropy, phase transitions, and porosity, his group is designing, synthesizing, and characterizing new classes of materials that exhibit fundamentally new behaviors and previously inaccessible functionalities.
Mason earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining Harvard University in 2018, he trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University.
Over the last year, Mason has been collaborating with Core Faculty member Pamela Silver, Ph.D., and Senior Scientist Marika Ziesack, Ph.D., on a project involving technology developed in his lab to address gas-transport challenges in biomanufacturing as part of the Sustainable Futures Initiative. This promising collaboration was named a 2025-2026 Validation Project.
Mason and his lab members are enthusiastic about forging additional collaborations at the Wyss Institute. “My group is eager to engage with the expertise and resources available at the Wyss to advance our research and find new problems that we can contribute to solving through the development of improved materials. I am also excited about the emphasis on translational science at the Wyss, and the ways the Institute helps to facilitate translating technologies from the lab to the market,” he explains.
Chao-ting (Ting) Wu
Chao-ting (Ting) Wu is a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, a Principal Investigator of the cross-institutional Center for Genome Imaging, and a co-founder of Acuity Spatial Genomics, now part of Bruker Spatial Genomics. She is also Director and Co-Founder of Personal Genetics Education and Dialogue (PGED), which promotes awareness and dialogue about genetic technologies in diverse communities, regardless of their socioeconomic, cultural, ethnic, educational, and religious backgrounds.
The Wu laboratory studies how chromosome behavior and positioning influence genome function and evolution, with implications for gene regulation, genome stability, and human diseases. They use a variety of tools to examine structural and functional aspects of chromosome organization to better understand the relationship between homologous chromosomes, genome compartmentalization, telomeres, DNA repair, and sequence ultraconservation. Her group has developed a variety of genetic imaging technologies that allow researchers to visualize DNA and RNA, chromosomes, and the whole genome, including Oligopaints, homolog-specific Oligopaints (HOPs), OligoSTORM, OligoDNA-PAINT, and OligoFISSEQ.
Wu earned her bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. from Harvard University before embarking on a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University and the Station for Natural Studies. She was a Fellow in the Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital before joining the Harvard Medical School Department of Genetics. Wu has received several prestigious awards, including an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, an NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award, and a Center of Excellence in Genomic Science (CEGS).
After collaborating with Core Faculty members Peng Yin, Ph.D., and William Shih, Ph.D., Wu first joined the Wyss as an Associate Faculty member in January 2018. Her group focused on developing technologies for super-resolution genome imaging using Oligopaints and OligoSTORM. Now, after some time away from the Institute, Wu’s increasing collaboration with Yin brought her back.
“I feel that the Wyss is extraordinary for its concentration of inventiveness, the support it provides its researchers as they invent, and the determination with which it carries invention to product on behalf of communities and the planet,” explains Wu.
“Adding Mo Khalil, Jarad Mason, and Ting Wu to our faculty leaves us better equipped to address the Grand Challenges facing our society. Their extensive experience and expertise in the areas of synthetic biology, chemistry, and genetics, and focus on translational science, complement the strengths of our community and will further our mission of transforming healthcare and the environment through our innovations,” said Wyss Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering at SEAS.