Scienceאלון חן

Alon Chen

Alon Chen is an Israeli neuroscientist who became the 11th President of the Weizmann Institute of Science in December 2019.

born 1970President of the Weizmann InstituteResearch on stress and anxietyMax Planck Institute of Psychiatry director

Occupation: researcher, neuroscientist, neurobiologist
Education: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Alon Chen was born in 1970 in Israel

Alon Chen was born in 1970 and grew up in Beersheba, under the name Alon Hamo. He served in the IDF as a combat soldier in the Paratroopers Brigade.

He earned a bachelor's degree in life sciences from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 1995. In 2001 he received a PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science, and also an MBA from Ben-Gurion University. From 2001 to 2005 he did postdoctoral research at the Salk Institute in California, with Rothschild and Fulbright scholarships.

In 2005 he returned to the Weizmann Institute as a senior scientist in the Neurobiology Department, later heading it. He became an associate professor in 2012 and a full professor in 2017. In 2013 he was appointed a director at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich and head of a joint Weizmann and Max Planck laboratory.

His research studies brain processes linked to stress and anxiety, as well as depression, eating disorders and metabolic syndromes. In December 2019 he succeeded Daniel Zajfman as President of the Weizmann Institute. He is married with 2 children.