2026 IUPAP Medal for the Physics of Life
The pioneering research by Dr. Alon laid the foundation for the field of Systems Biology. His contributions have shaped the conceptual framework of the fundamental design principles of the living system, ranging from bacteria to human physiology and disease.
Dr. Uri Alon has made fundamental contributions to systems biology, most notably through the discovery of network motifs – recurring patterns of interactions between biological entities such as genes, proteins, and cells. These motifs are now recognized as key building blocks of complex networks and perform specific computational functions, including persistence detection and fold-change detection. He has extensively characterized their dynamic properties across systems ranging from bacterial gene regulation to mammalian cell–cell interaction circuits.
Uri Alon is a professor in the Department of Molecular Cell Biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Trained as a physicist, he works at the interface between physics and biology and is a pioneer of systems biology. His research has provided a foundation for understanding cellular systems and designing biological circuits, and more recently focuses on principles in human physiology and systems medicine, including hormone regulation, fibrosis, diabetes, and aging. He has received several international awards and holds the Abish-Frenkel Professorial Chair in Systems Biology.
