Born on Kibbutz Hazor, Prof. Ido Amit earned his BSc (2000) and MSc (2002) in life sciences from Bar-Ilan University. He earned a PhD in biological regulation at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2007. For four years, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before joining the Weizmann Institute in 2011. He is the incumbent of the Alan and Laraine Fischer Career Development Chair.
Prof. Amit aims at elucidating how humans encode complex regulatory functions in their genomes with a focus on haematopoiesis – the formation of blood cells - and immune responses. Using concepts from functional genomics, molecular biology, computer science, physics, and biotechnology, he studies fundamental principles of genome function and regulation and how they affect blood development and immune homeostasis in both health and disease—which, he hopes, will bridge the gap between our understanding of an individual’s personal genome and the physiological consequences in health and disease. In 2014 he published two articles in Science and one in Cell challenging current knowledge of regulatory regions in the genome and how they affect our immune system function in both health and disease. For his reaserch Prof. Amit develops cutting-edge single-cell next-generation sequencing approaches to crack the regulatory code. These novel methods , it is hoped, will advance diagnostics and personalized treatment based on an individual’s genome.
His honors include the Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research, the Ernest and Bonnie Beutler Award, the Morris Levinson Prize in Biology, and an EMBO Gold Medal in 2015. He was also a Yigal Alon Foundation Scholar, a recipient of a Starting Scientist Award, and a European Research Council grant recipient, (2012) , as well as being elected an EMBO Young Investigator in 2013. He received a BIKURA first award of the Israel Science Foundation, a Career Development Award, and long-term fellowship from the Human Frontiers Science Program (2008-2011), scholarship, the Claire and Emanuel G. Rosenblatt Fellowship Award (2009), and a scholarship for the 47th International Academy of Achievements Summit (2008).
Prof. Amit enjoys hiking and spending time with his family, as well as road and mountain biking.