Aron Weller, PhD (The Johns Hopkins University), is a Professor at the Psychology Department and the Gonda Brain Research Center, Bar Ilan University. His postdoctoral training was at the Psychiatry Depts., Cornell University Medical College & Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York. He served on the executive committees of the Israel Society for Neuroscience and (as Treasurer) the Israel Society for Biological Psychiatry and is currently on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel. Internationally, he was on the Board of Directors of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior and is on the editorial boards of "Developmental Psychobiology", "Journal of Obesity" "Frontiers in Physiology" and “Translational Neuroscience”. He has authored and co-authored >170 scientific publications. His major research theme is the study of resilience and vulnerability to environmental and nutritional stressors, searching for mechanisms that may underlie the risk for unhealthy coping.

Research Fields:

• Developmental Psychobiology

• Behavioral Neuroscience

• Psychoneuroendocrinology

• Biological Psychiatry

• Animal models of obesity, binge eating, depression, infant-mother attachment, emotion-regulation

• Epigenetics

• Assessing the effects of cannabinoids in animal models of psychiatric disorders

Research Projects

• Examining neurochemical, neuroanatomical and hormonal mechanisms in the development of emotion-regulation and self-regulation in animal models of depression.
• Neurobiological, epigenetic and environmental mechanisms underlying the development of obesity and binge-eating, using animal models.
• Animal models of adolescent and maternal depression and anxiety