Professor Uri Alon

A pioneer of the new field of systems biology, Prof. Uri Alon aims to uncover the general underlying principles that govern the functioning of biological circuits and networks. Seeking to clarify how cells make decisions and process information, he has discovered that the biochemical circuitry in the cell is much simpler than previously thought because it is composed of repeating circuits called network motifs. He and his team have demonstrated, experimentally and theoretically, that each motif carries out a key information processing task in the cell. Since this discovery, such motifs have been found in numerous biological and non-biological systems, from bacteria to humans, including signal transduction pathways within the cell and neuronal networks in the brain.

Prof. Alon and his group investigate network motifs by means of novel experimental approaches for imaging genes and proteins in living cells. These studies have led to a number of important findings, including, for example, the identification of proteins that control whether cancer cells escape the effects of anti-cancer drugs, the discovery that the activity of p53, one of the major tumor suppressor genes, follows a rhythmic on-and-off pattern, and the development of computer simulations that provide new insights into the process and speed of evolution. This research offers a means of understanding complicated biological systems according to mathematical design principles and forms the basis for understanding the cells’ internal circuitry malfunctions in cancer and other diseases.

Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, Prof. Alon earned his B.Sc. degree in physics and mathematics, and, in 1989, his M.Sc. degree in physics, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was awarded his Ph.D. in physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1996. After conducting postdoctoral studies in the Departments of Physics and Molecular Biology at Princeton University for three years, he joined the Department of Molecular Cell Biology at the Weizmann Institute as a senior scientist in 1999. He was promoted to associate professor in 2004 and full professor in 2008. His prizes and honors include the Moore Fellowship, California Institute of Technology (2000), EMBO Young Investigator Award (2001), Minerva Junior Research Group on Biological Computation (2003), Morris L. Levinson Award in Biology, Weizmann Institute Scientific Council (2003), IBM Faculty Award (2003), Overton Prize of the International Society for Computational Biology (2004), Teva Founders Prize (2005) and EMBO membership (2007).

Prof. Alon is an enthusiastic new father, whose daughter Gefen was born in 2007. He acts and teaches in Playback Theatre, an improvisation theatre that aims to connect people by listening to real life stories told by audience members and enacting them on the spot.