Ali was born in Houston, Texas and raised in Safwa, Saudi Arabia. In 2014, he started studying medicine at University of Groningen, which he successfully completed in 2020. During his medicine degree, he joined Prof. Dr. van der Meer’s group and subsequently successfully applied for MD-PhD program. Ali is working on elucidating the role of selenium in the context of heart failure and is under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Peter van der Meer and Dr. Nils Bomer.