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Aviv Regev
Aviv Regev
Aviv Regev
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Aviv Regev (Hebrew: אביב רגב; born 11 July 1971)[3] is a computational biologist and systems biologist and Executive Vice President and Head of Genentech Research and Early Development in Genentech/Roche.[4] She is a core member (on leave) at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and professor (on leave) at the Department of Biology of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[5] Regev is a pioneer of single cell genomics and of computational and systems biology of gene regulatory circuits. She founded and leads the Human Cell Atlas project,[6] together with Sarah Teichmann. Since 2024, she has served as a scientific advisory board member of Arc Institute.[7]

Key Information

Education

[edit]

Regev studied at the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students of Tel Aviv University, where she completed her PhD under the supervision of Eva Jablonka,[8] and Ehud Shapiro.[9]

Career and research

[edit]

In 2020, Regev became the head and executive vice president of Genentech Research and Early Development, based in South San Francisco, and a member of the extended corporate executive committee of Roche.[10][11] Previously, she was a Core Institute Member (now on leave), chair of the Faculty, founding director of the Klarman Cell Observatory and co-director Cell Circuits Program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She was also a professor in the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (now on leave), as well as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Regev's research[12] includes work on gene expression[13][14] (with Eran Segal and David Botstein), and the use of π-calculus to represent biochemical processes.[15][16][17] Regev's team has been a leading pioneer of single-cell genomics experimental and computational methods.[18] In 2014, she pitched the idea of the creation of Human Cell Atlas,[19] a project to describe all cell types in the human body. Regev founded the Human Cell Atlas together with Sarah Teichmann along with collaborators all over the world.[20]

Single Cell Genomics

[edit]

Regev's lab pioneered the development and application of many of the key experimental and computational advances for single cell and spatial genomics, especially single cell RNA-Seq (scRNA-seq).

Awards and honors

[edit]

Regev is a fellow of the International Society of Computational Biology (ISCB) (2017),[21] a Helmholtz Fellow (2020),[22] and a fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) (2021).[23] She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS, elected 2019)[24] and of the US National Academy of Medicine (NAM, elected 2020).[25] She was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Society [26] and as an associate member of the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2024.[27]

  • National Academy of Medicine Annual Meeting Keynote, 2025[28]
  • Dickson Prize in Science, 2025[29]
  • William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology, 2025[30]
  • Streisinger Memorial Lecture, 2025[31]
  • Sune Bergström Award, 2025 [32]
  • Shai Shacknai Memorial Prize and Lectureship in Immunology and Cancer Research, 2024 [33]
  • TED AI 2023 Talk: Can AI Help Develop New Medicines[34][35]
  • 25th L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards (Laureate for North America), 2023[36]
  • Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2022[37]
  • Anderson Lecture, University of Virginia, 2022[38]
  • Nakasone Award from the Human Frontiers Science Program (2022)[39]
  • Honorary doctorate, ETH Zurich (2021)[40]
  • Ernst Schering Prize (2021)[41]
  • James Prize in Science and Technology Integration, National Academy of Sciences (2021)[42]
  • Vanderbilt Prize (2021)[43]
  • She was awarded the 25th Keio Medical Science Prize in 2020.[44][45]
  • AACR-Irving Weinstein Foundation Distinguished Lecture (2021)[46]
  • Lurie Prize from the Foundation for the NIH (FNIH) (2020)[47]
  • Mendel Lecture, European Society of Human Genetics (2020)[48]
  • Jonathan Kraft Prize from Massachusetts General Hospital (2020)[49]
  • FASEB Excellence in Science Mid-Career Investigator Award (2019)[50]
  • She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2019.[51]
  • She also served on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2018.
  • Weatherall Lecture, University Oxford, UK (2018)[52]
  • Harvey Lecture, Harvey Society, New York (2018)[53]
  • McCormick Lecture, Stanford University (2018)[54]
  • Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research (2017).[55]
  • ISCB Innovator Award in 2017.[2][56]
  • Earl and Thressa Stadtman Scholar Award from the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) (2014)[57]
  • Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award.[58]
  • In 2008, she was also awarded the NIH Director's Pioneer Award.[59][60]
  • Regev was awarded the Overton Prize in 2008 for "outstanding accomplishment to a scientist in the early to mid stage of his or her career".[1]

References

[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Aviv Regev

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from Grokipedia
Aviv Regev (born 1971) is an Israeli-American computational biologist and systems biologist renowned for her pioneering work in single-cell genomics and the elucidation of molecular circuits governing cellular function in health and disease. She currently serves as Head and Executive Vice President of Genentech Research and Early Development (gRED), a role she assumed in August 2020, where she oversees all aspects of drug discovery and development across the organization. Regev is also a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on leave, an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a member of the Board of Directors at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard since 2025, and a former chair of the faculty and core member at the Broad Institute. Regev's academic journey began with a degree (summa cum laude) from in 1997, followed by a Ph.D. in from the same institution in 2002. She then pursued postdoctoral research as a Bauer Fellow at from 2003 to 2006. Joining the Broad Institute in 2006 as a core member, she advanced to founding director of the Klarman Cell Observatory in 2012, a position she held until 2020, while also establishing her laboratory focused on developing innovative experimental and computational tools to map regulation and cellular diversity. In her current leadership at , a member of the Group, Regev contributes to the company's executive committee, , and Roche's expanded corporate executive committee, driving advancements in from to clinical applications. Her research has profoundly influenced the field of , particularly through the creation of methods for single-cell RNA sequencing that enable the study of cellular heterogeneity at unprecedented resolution. A key milestone is her role as founding co-chair of the Human Cell Atlas consortium since 2016, an international effort to create comprehensive reference maps of all human cells to advance understanding of and disease. Regev's lab continues to explore biological circuits, evolution, and tissue-level gene regulation, with applications in cancer, immunology, and . Regev's contributions have earned her numerous prestigious awards, including the Dickson Prize in Science in 2025, the William B. Coley Award in 2025, the HFSP Nakasone Award in 2022 for innovative computational approaches to cellular phenotypes, the Ernst Schering Prize in 2021, the Vanderbilt Prize in in 2021, the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research in 2017, and the ISCB Innovator Award in 2017. She is an elected member of the , the , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (since 2024), as well as a fellow of the International Society for . Additionally, she received the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Award and the Keio Medical Science Prize, recognizing her impact on .

Early Life and Education

Early Life

Aviv Regev was born in 1971 in Israel. She grew up in a supportive family of science and engineering enthusiasts, whose environment encouraged intellectual curiosity from an early age. As a child, Regev displayed a strong interest in mathematics, physics, languages, and reading, activities that fostered her analytical mindset and passion for problem-solving. This familial influence sparked her initial inclination toward mathematics and computer sciences, setting the stage for her later pursuits in biology and computation.

Education

Aviv Regev pursued her graduate studies at through the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students, a selective initiative designed to foster excellence by integrating multiple scientific disciplines. She enrolled directly into this program without a prior , earning her M.Sc. summa cum laude between 1992 and 1997. Her coursework emphasized intersections between , , and , allowing her to explore computational approaches to biological questions early on. Following her master's, Regev continued at for her Ph.D. in , completing it in 2002. Her doctoral research was supervised by Eva Jablonka, a professor at known for work in and , and Ehud Shapiro, a professor at the specializing in computational models and programming languages. The thesis centered on computational models of biological processes, particularly conceptualizing cells as computational systems with circuit-like gene regulatory networks. During her Ph.D., Regev undertook early projects that bridged mathematical modeling and biological systems, including developing frameworks to simulate dynamics as programmable circuits, which laid foundational ideas for her later research in . These efforts were influenced by her interdisciplinary training and the guidance of her advisors, who encouraged novel applications of to evolutionary and cellular mechanisms.

Professional Career

Academic Positions

Following her PhD in computational biology from Tel Aviv University in 2002, Aviv Regev served as a Bauer Fellow at the Center for Genomics Research at Harvard University from 2003 to 2006, where she conducted postdoctoral research bridging computational modeling and genomics. In 2006, Regev joined the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard as a Core Institute Member, a position she held until 2020. That same year, she was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), advancing to Associate Professor in 2011 and full Professor in 2015, with all roles placed on leave following her departure from academia in 2020. Regev was an Early Career Scientist at the (HHMI) from 2009 to 2014 and served as an HHMI Investigator from 2014 to 2020, a position held on leave since then. At the Broad Institute, she served as Co-Chair of the Faculty from 2015 to 2020 and as Founding Director of the Klarman Cell Observatory from 2012 to 2020.

Industry Leadership

In August 2020, Aviv Regev joined , a member of the Group, as Head and Executive Vice President of Genentech Research and Early Development (gRED). In this role, she succeeded Michael Varney and became a member of the Roche Enlarged Corporate Executive Committee, bringing her expertise from the Broad Institute to bridge academic innovation with industry application. Regev oversees all aspects of and development, from target identification through clinical proof-of-concept, managing a global team of over 2,400 employees across multiple therapeutic areas including , , and . Her leadership emphasizes integrating and into the research pipeline to accelerate the identification of novel therapeutics, fostering a data-driven approach that combines experimental with models. Under Regev's direction, has advanced its strategy by leveraging single-cell genomics technologies to inform therapeutic development, such as creating multi-modal cell atlases that guide precision medicine in cancer and other diseases. Key initiatives include the "Lab-in-the-Loop" framework, which iteratively refines computational predictions with wet-lab experiments to enhance drug candidate selection, and internal efforts applying AI to antibiotic discovery amid rising . As of 2025, these efforts have contributed to expanded use of the Human Cell Atlas in Roche's portfolio, streamlining the path from cellular insights to clinical candidates.

Scientific Research

Computational Biology and Gene Regulation

Aviv Regev's early contributions to computational biology included pioneering the use of process calculi to model biochemical signaling pathways. In 2001, she co-authored a foundational paper applying the π-calculus—a formal language for describing concurrent processes—to represent and simulate molecular interactions, such as receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) to mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signal transduction. This approach treated biomolecules as communicating processes, enabling the formal specification of dynamic behaviors like binding, diffusion, and degradation, and facilitating simulations that captured stochastic aspects of pathway activation. Regev collaborated with Eran Segal and David Botstein on developing probabilistic models for analyzing data, emphasizing the limitations of traditional clustering methods. Their 2003 work introduced module networks, a Bayesian framework that identifies groups of co-regulated genes (modules) and infers condition-specific regulators from expression profiles, outperforming static clustering by accounting for regulatory changes across contexts like yeast cell cycle stages. This method used probabilistic graphical models to learn module compositions and dependencies, revealing, for instance, transcription factors like Ste12p regulating mating-response modules in specific conditions. Building on this, their study applied module networks to human cancer data, constructing a "module map" that highlighted conditional activities of expression modules in subtypes, aiding in the discovery of prognostic patterns. Regev's research extended to the evolutionary dynamics of molecular networks, supported by her 2007 Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface, which funded investigations into how these networks function and adapt. A key 2005 collaboration with Amos Tanay and Ron Shamir analyzed the of ribosomal in , integrating comparative expression data and sequence conservation to show that ancient modules retain core functions while gaining species-specific regulators, illustrating a balance between conservation and evolvability in regulatory architectures. This work demonstrated how and subfunctionalization drive network divergence, with ribosomal genes evolving under purifying selection to maintain dosage balance across species. These computational frameworks for bulk gene provided essential foundations for subsequent extensions to single-cell resolution.

Single-Cell Genomics

Aviv Regev advanced single-cell sequencing (scRNA-seq) methods in the early 2010s, pioneering their application to dissect cellular heterogeneity at unprecedented resolution. Starting around 2011, her lab developed protocols to profile transcriptomes from individual cells, overcoming technical challenges like low yield and high noise. A landmark study in 2013 analyzed scRNA-seq data from 18 bone-marrow-derived dendritic cells stimulated with , revealing extensive bimodal variation in mRNA abundance and patterns that bulk had obscured. This work demonstrated scRNA-seq's power to uncover dynamic, probabilistic states in immune responses, validating findings through RNA-fluorescence in situ hybridization. Regev's group introduced key innovations in computational pipelines for scRNA-seq analysis, focusing on , clustering, and identification. Collaborating with Rahul Satija, they co-developed Seurat, an that integrates non-linear , graph-based clustering, and differential expression testing to robustly identify s amid technical noise and sparsity.01274-7) Seurat's aligns datasets across batches, enabling scalable analysis of thousands of cells while emphasizing biological variance over artifacts. For , Regev led the creation of an optimal-transport framework in 2019, which reconstructs continuous developmental paths from scRNA-seq time-course data by modeling distributions as evolving probability measures, applied to cellular in fibroblasts.30039-X) These methods prioritized handling dropout events and variance stabilization, influencing tools like for pseudotemporal ordering in differentiation processes. Her scRNA-seq innovations found early applications in developmental biology and disease states, particularly through immune cell studies. In a 2017 analysis of over 2,400 human blood cells, Regev's team identified novel and subtypes, including previously unrecognized progenitors, linking transcriptional signatures to functional diversity in immunity. Extending to disease, the 2016 Perturb-seq method combined perturbations with scRNA-seq to map regulatory circuits in immune cells, profiling 200,000 s to reveal how transcription factors drive antiviral responses and identify context-specific gene modules.31610-5) These demonstrations in immune cells highlighted scRNA-seq's role in tracing differentiation trajectories and pinpointing therapeutic targets in inflammatory disorders.

Human Cell Atlas Initiative

Aviv Regev co-founded the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) consortium in 2016 alongside Teichmann, following Regev's initial proposal of the concept in 2014 during a talk at the . The inaugural planning meeting, held in and organized by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, , and , brought together international experts to establish the initiative's goals of creating comprehensive reference maps of all human cells to advance understanding of health and disease. As co-chair of the HCA Organizing Committee, Regev has played a pivotal role in steering the project's strategic direction, including the development of coordination standards, ethical frameworks for global , and open-access policies to ensure equitable sharing of findings. Under this , the has grown to include over 3,500 members from more than 1,700 institutes across 100+ countries, fostering interdisciplinary efforts in single-cell and beyond. Key milestones include the 2017 HCA White Paper, which outlined the scientific vision, technological roadmap, and organizational structure for building the atlas, emphasizing the integration of diverse datasets for a holistic view of cellular diversity. Subsequent progress reports have highlighted organ-specific atlases, such as the integrated Human Cell Atlas (HLCA) released in 2023, which profiled over 2.4 million cells from healthy and diseased to reveal rare cell states and disease mechanisms, and the Brain Cell Atlas in 2024, encompassing 11.3 million cells to map molecular diversity across brain regions. By 2025, the HCA has advanced toward a first-draft atlas covering 18 organs and tissues, with ongoing efforts to incorporate multimodal data for enhanced resolution. A major focus has been integrating single-cell RNA sequencing data—building on established technologies—with to enable 3D mapping of cellular organization within tissues. This approach has facilitated breakthroughs like spatially resolved maps of the and , revealing how cell types interact in their native environments to support functions such as immune responses and neural signaling. These advancements underscore the HCA's role in transforming biomedical research by providing reference frameworks for studying development, , and therapeutic responses.

Awards and Honors

Major Prizes and Lectures

Aviv Regev has received numerous prestigious prizes recognizing her contributions to and single-cell , particularly in advancing understanding of cellular mechanisms in health and disease. In 2008, Regev received the ISCB Overton Prize from the International Society for for her outstanding accomplishments in . In 2017, Regev was awarded the ISCB Innovator Award by the International Society for for her innovative computational approaches to biological discovery. That same year, she received the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research from , honoring her groundbreaking work in cancer . In 2020, Regev was honored with the Keio Medical Science Prize from the Medical Science Fund for her pioneering integration of mathematics and computation in . She also received the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences from the Foundation for the , acknowledging her transformative impact on biomedical research. The year 2021 brought further recognition, including the Ernst Schering Prize from the Schering Stiftung for her outstanding contributions to life sciences. Regev was also awarded the Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science from for her exceptional advancements in the field, and the James Prize in Science and Technology Integration from the . In 2022, she received the HFSP Nakasone Award from the Human Frontier Science Program for her visionary leadership in interdisciplinary life sciences research. The following year, 2023, Regev was selected as a laureate for the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Awards, celebrating her revolutionary application of computational methods to . In 2024, Regev was awarded the Rabbi Shai Shacknai Memorial Prize for and from the Lautenberg Center at Hebrew University, recognizing her exceptional work in and cancer. Among her 2025 honors, Regev received the Dickson Prize in Science from for her highly impactful contributions to computational methodologies in biological discovery. She was also awarded the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor from the Cancer Research Institute, shared with Alan Korman, for pioneering advances in and . Additionally, she received the Award at the Spring Symposium for her pioneering discoveries in single-cell and . Regev has also been invited to deliver prominent lectures, including the keynote address at the 2025 Annual Meeting on "Frontiers of AI & Health: Care, Discovery, and Education."

Academy Memberships

Aviv Regev was elected to the (NAS) in 2019, recognizing her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. In 2020, she was elected to the (NAM), honoring her contributions to advancing health and medicine through innovative approaches in . Regev's election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022 highlighted her leadership in integrating computational methods with biological discovery, influencing fields from gene regulation to . In 2024, she was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's , for her pioneering work in and cellular mapping. That same year, Regev became an associate member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), acknowledging her impact on molecular life sciences through advanced genomic technologies. These academy memberships underscore the broad influence of Regev's research on understanding complex biological systems at the cellular level.

References

  1. https://www.broadinstitute.org/bios/aviv-regev
  2. https://www.roche.com/about/leadership/aviv-regev
  3. https://www.gene.com/scientists/our-scientists/aviv-regev
  4. https://www.hfsp.org/hfsp-nakasone-award/2022-aviv-regev
  5. https://www.cmu.edu/leadership/the-provost/campus-comms/10-06-25
  6. https://www.cancerresearch.org/blog/gala25-recap
  7. https://www.loreal.com/en/articles/commitments/professor-aviv-regev-fwis/
  8. https://ml-eu.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/a4435657-31d9-4fea-a98f-852276d2611c
  9. https://www.hhmi.org/scientists/aviv-regev
  10. https://www.broadinstitute.org/klarman-cell-observatory
  11. https://www.roche.com/media/releases/med-cor-2020-05-11
  12. https://www.gene.com/media/press-releases/14851/2020-05-10/changes-to-the-roche-enlarged-corporate-
  13. https://lsi.princeton.edu/events/2021/aviv-regev-genentech-formerly-broad-institute
  14. https://www.roche.com/innovation/structure/genentech
  15. https://insights.citeline.com/in-vivo/leadership/c-suite-speaks/aviv-regev-the-computational-biologist-remaking-drug-discovery-at-genentech-B4ZMH5QXQRAMHJNMEUVEBXMGF4/
  16. https://www.genengnews.com/topics/cancer/aacr-2024-aviv-regev-shows-how-single-cell-atlases-foster-new-axis-to-genentechs-drug-discovery/
  17. https://www.drugdiscoverytrends.com/genentech-ai-lab-in-the-loop-drug-discovery/
  18. https://www.gene.com/stories/ai-and-the-quest-for-new-antibiotics
  19. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/18/g-s1-60986/how-the-human-cell-atlas-is-fast-tracking-new-medicines
  20. http://psb.stanford.edu/psb-online/proceedings/psb01/regev.pdf
  21. https://doi.org/10.1038/ng1222
  22. https://www.cellcomm.org/forum/interviews-with-experts/interview-with-aviv-regev-and-sarah-teichmann
  23. https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/international-human-cell-atlas-initiative-gets-underway
  24. https://www.humancellatlas.org/learn-more/about-the-human-cell-atlas/
  25. https://www.humancellatlas.org/about-us/governance/
  26. https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.05192
  27. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02327-2
  28. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03150-z
  29. https://www.humancellatlas.org/press_release/human-cell-atlas-achieves-leap-in-understanding-of-the-human-body/
  30. https://www.humancellatlas.org/publications/
  31. https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/study-molecular-networks-earns-prize-core-member
  32. https://scheringstiftung.de/en/programm/lebenswissenschaften/ernst-schering-preis/ernst-schering-preis-2021/
  33. https://news.vumc.org/2021/04/28/regev-receives-vanderbilt-prize-in-biomedical-science/
  34. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/discover-laureates-25th-loreal-unesco-women-science-international-awards
  35. https://lautenbergcenter.org/the-rabbi-shai-shaknai-award-of-2024-was-awarded-to-prof-aviv-regev/
  36. https://www.cancerresearch.org/william-b-coley-award
  37. https://www.lundspringsymposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/2025-05-15-Program-update-LSS-2025.pdf
  38. https://nam.edu/event/2025-nam-annual-meeting/
  39. https://www.nasonline.org/directory-entry/aviv-regev-oxh1if/
  40. https://www.amacad.org/person/aviv-regev
  41. https://royalsociety.org/people/aviv-regev-36771/
  42. https://people.embo.org/profile/aviv-regev
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