Prof. Amir Orian was born in Jerusalem, Israel in 1964. He received his MD (1999), and PhD in biochemistry (2000) from the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine. During his graduate studies, and under the supervision of Professor Aaron Ciechanover, he investigated the role of the ubiquitin system in the regulation of the immune response. Specifically, he studied the mechanisms involved in the limited proteolytic processing of the NF-kB precursor p105 molecule, as well as signal induced degradation of the NF-kB inhibitor IkB. For his Post-doctoral training, he joined the lab of Dr. Robert Eisenman at the Fred Hutchinson Research Cancer. As a Post-doctoral fellow, he studied the regulation and mode of action of the Myc oncogene, which is intimately involved in leukemias, lymphomas, and myeloma. Amir has been a member of the Rappaport Research Institute since 2005, and is a visiting associate professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle WA. He is also a board member of the SingGene-MDC-Berlin/Technion/Hebrew-University International graduate program. Amir’s current research is aimed at understanding the function and regulation of transcriptional networks in development and cancer. Furthermore, the lab is using the fly system as a novel platform for in vivo drug discovery. One clear advantage of this approach is the ability to rapidly translate findings emerging from the fly system to relevant human cancers. During his MD/PhD studies, he received the Wolf Foundation Award, and the Clore Excellence Fellowship, as well as the Fulkes Fellowship for MD/PhD. He is a recipient of the Alon-ISF Fellowship for young scientists, and the HFSP-CDA Award. He is a special fellow of the Lymphomas and Leukemia Society, a Technion-Horev fellow, and a recipient of the 2007 Krill Award for outstanding young scientists.