Aaron Ciechanover

Aaron Ciechanover’s Nobel Prize-winning research revealed how cells selectively break down unwanted or damaged proteins, fundamentally advancing our understanding of cellular regulation and opening new avenues for the treatment of cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and other disorders. He is a biochemist and Distinguished Research Professor at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. He studied medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and obtained his doctorate in biochemistry from the Technion in 1981. Following postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he joined the Technion faculty in 1984. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2004, together with Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose, for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. His numerous other honours include the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (2000), the EMET Prize (2002) and the Israel Prize for Biology (2003). He is a member of several leading international academies, including the Leopoldina and the US National Academy of Sciences.