Speaker Bio: Uri Alon, Ph.D.

Uri Alon is a Professor and Systems Biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science. His highly cited research investigates gene expression, network motifs and the design principles of biological networks in Escherichia coli and other organisms using both computational biology and traditional experimental wet laboratory techniques. Alon earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science.

After having his interest in biology sparked, he headed for his postdoctoral work at Princeton University in experimental biology, returning to the Weizmann Institute as a Professor. He is featured in several popular videos on YouTube such as Sunday at the Lab (with Michael Elowitz) and How to Give a Good Talk. His TED talk entitled Why Science Demands a Leap into the Unknown, has been viewed well over 900,000 times. As of 2011, he is also the author of the most highly bookmarked scientific paper on CiteULike How To Choose a Good Scientific Problem and How to Build a Motivated Research Group. In 2014 Dr. Alon received the HFSP Nakasone Award for "his pioneering work in discovering network motifs".