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Ron Milo

Ron Milo is an Israeli systems biologist and professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science, known for his work on carbon fixation and on mapping the biomass of life on Earth.

born 1975Engineering bacteria to fix carbonMapping biomass on EarthFounding the BioNumbers databaseThe book Cell Biology by the Numbers

Born: 11 February 1975, Haifa
Occupation: biochemist, biologist, university teacher
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Weizmann Institute of Science, Harvard Medical School

Ron Milo was born in 1975 in Haifa

Ron Milo was born in Haifa in 1975 and grew up in Kfar Saba. His parents are Ada and Colonel Yigal Milo. At 15 he won the National Physics Olympiad.

Within the Talpiot program he earned a bachelor's degree with honors in physics and mathematics from the Hebrew University. He then received a master's degree in electrical engineering from Tel Aviv University and a PhD in the lab of Uri Alon at the Weizmann Institute. From 2006 to 2008 he was the first Harvard Systems Biology Fellow at Harvard Medical School.

At Weizmann his group studies energy and metabolic networks with the aim of producing food more efficiently. The group was the first to show bacteria engineered to turn carbon dioxide into sugar. He also leads a global count of biomass on Earth and founded the BioNumbers database.

He was named Weizmann Dean of Education in 2019 and head of the institute's sustainability institute in 2020. Since 2020 he has chaired the Israel Society of Ecology and Environmental Sciences. He won the Rothschild Prize in 2024 and lives in Kfar Saba, married with 3 daughters.