Kyle J. Lauersen

Associate Professor Bioengineering, Chair Bioscience and Bioengineering Programs

Kyle J. Lauersen is Associate Professor of Bioengineering at KAUST, within the Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division, where he chairs the Bioengineering and Bioscience programs and leads the Sustainable & Synthetic Biotechnology group. He earned his PhD at Bielefeld University, Germany, in 2014 on heterologous protein expression in microalgae, after bachelor's and master's degrees from Queen's University in Canada, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the EU Horizon 2020 Photofuel project before joining KAUST in 2019. His laboratory engineers microalgae as green cell factories that convert CO2 and waste carbon streams into high-value compounds such as terpenoids, and maintains a living library of more than 150 algal isolates from the Arabian Peninsula. He has been an adjunct associate professor at Arizona State University's algae technology center since 2023, sits on editorial boards including Planta and New Biotechnology, and received the KAUST Distinguished Teaching Award in 2024.