Michal Schwartz

Michal Schwartz was born in 1950 in Tel Aviv

Michal Schwartz was born in Tel Aviv on 1 January 1950 and grew up in Holon. Her father, Mordechai Hevroni, was a Holocaust survivor. Her mother, Hana, was born in the country.

She earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1972. In 1977 she received a PhD in immunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science. She then did postdoctoral work on nerve regeneration at the University of Michigan.

In 1980 she joined the Department of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute, and she became a full professor in 1998. She coined the term protective autoimmunity and showed that immune cells help repair the spinal cord and support the healthy brain. Her team identified the choroid plexus as a meeting point between the brain and the immune system, and she has worked on using cancer immunotherapies against Alzheimer's disease.

Since 2016 she has chaired the International Society of Neuroimmunology. She is a cofounder and chief scientist of the startup ImmunoBrain Checkpoint. She married biochemist Michael Eisenbach in 1991 and is a mother of 4.