Professor Alon Chen is Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany. In parallel, he is Head of the Department of Neurobiology at Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. Alon also serves as the Head of the Max Planck Society - Weizmann Institute of Science Laboratory for Experimental Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Neurogenetics. Alon’s research focuses on the Neurobiology of Stress, particularly the mechanisms by which the brain is regulating the response to stressful challenges and how this response is linked to psychiatric disorders. The collective long-term goal of his research is to elucidate the pathways and mechanisms by which stressors are perceived, processed, and transduced into neuroendocrine and behavioral responses under healthy and pathological conditions. Alon’s lab has made significant discoveries in his field, including fundamental aspects of the organism’s stress response and linking the action of specific stress-related genes, epigenetic mechanisms and brain circuits with anxiety disorders, depression, eating disorders and the metabolic syndrome. Alon and his team use both genetic mouse models and human patients to ultimately create the scientific groundwork for therapeutic interventions to treat stress-related behavioral and physiological disorders.