Professor Hagos attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he earned his Bachelor of Science from the Department of Cell and Structural Biology in May 1998. He obtained his PhD in Cellular and Developmental genetics from the University of Georgia in 2007. He performed postdoctoral work at Emory University from 2007–2010. Professor Hagos joined Colgate University in July 2010. His research is mainly focused on molecules that prevent cancer. In the past 12 years, at Colgate University alone, he has directly supervised and mentored more than 150 students in his lab, many of whom are either currently completing or have finished their MS, MD, or PhD.