Ilan Chet

Ilan Chet was born in 1939 in Haifa

Ilan Chet was born in Haifa in 1939. He attended the Hugim school and belonged to a Scouts movement group.

He served in the paratrooper Nahal and later in reserve Brigade 55. He fought and was wounded in the Dothan Valley in the Six-Day War.

He studied at the Hebrew University Faculty of Agriculture, earning a BSc in 1962, an MSc in 1964 and a PhD in microbiology. He became a lecturer there in 1969 and later a full professor. He was founding director of the Minerva Center for Agricultural Biotechnology, dean of the faculty from 1986 to 1989, and vice president for research and development for a decade.

His research deals with controlling plant diseases with environment-friendly microorganisms. He holds 30 patents and was a visiting professor at Harvard, Cornell, Rutgers, Lund and Göttingen. He also worked as a scientist at DuPont and advised the European Union and NATO.

From 2001 to 2006 he was president of the Weizmann Institute of Science. From 2010 to 2016 he was deputy secretary general of the Union for the Mediterranean, responsible for higher education and research. Since 2008 he has chaired the Foundation for Health and Environment.