Prof. Ron Milo earned a BSc in physics and mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1996), an MSc in electrical engineering at Tel Aviv University (1999), and a PhD in biological physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science (2005) working with Prof. Uri Alon. He was the first fellow in the new systems biology program at Harvard Medical School. He joined the Department of Plant Sciences (now the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences) at the Weizmann Institute in 2008.
Prof. Milo brings the tools of systems biology to bear on the challenges of sustainability. His research aims to understand the cellular highways of energy and carbon transformations in quantitative terms. His research team employs a combination of computational and experimental synthetic biology tools with a focus on carbon fixation, the biological process which incorporates carbon dioxide (CO2) into organic compounds. He works to understand fundamental design principles of carbon fixation and photosynthesis, with the goal of improving the efficiency of food and fuel production.
In 2010, Prof. Milo was recognized by Thomson Reuters for authoring a highly cited paper, chosen among all scientific papers in the first decade of the 21st century. He has received a number of academic and scientific awards, including a GE & Science Prize for Young Life Scientists (2006), the John F. Kennedy Prize awarded by the Institute to PhD graduates (2006), the Helinger Memorial Prize (2005), and the D.N. Chorafas International PhD award (2004He was elected as a member of the Israel Young Academy in 2014 and chosen as the Head of the Israel Young Academy at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2015.
He enjoys playing the harmonica and hiking with his wife, Hilla, and their two daughters, Geffen and Yaara.