Professor Magdy Mahfouz is a Full Professor of Bioengineering, Bioscience, and Plant Science. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular Genetics at Ohio State University and did his postdoctoral training at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Professor Mahfouz is the principal investigator of the Laboratory for Genome Engineering and Synthetic Biology. His research group focuses on developing genome engineering and synthetic biology technologies and applications for crop bioengineering, biomanufacturing, and diagnostics. He has authored and co-authored more than 110 publications and seven pending or issued patent applications. He has given invited talks or lectures at the leading genome engineering and synthetic biology conferences. 

Bioengineering is a multidisciplinary field that depends on the cross-fertilization of knowledge and advances in diverse fields of biology, molecular biology, computational biology, engineering, and chemistry. It empowers us to harness these advances and translate ideas into products and address grand challenges facing humanity. His research group focuses on biomanufacturing, using plants as chassis for bioproduction of select compounds of value, including therapeutics and biopharmaceutical, crop bioengineering using CRISPR systems, and molecular diagnostics of pathogens. The motto of Professor Mahfouz’s laboratory is “Bioengineering for the future, encapsulates our ideas, beliefs, and goals.”