- Associate Professor, Immunology, School of Biochemistry Neurobiology Biophysics, Tel Aviv University
Dr. Asya Rolls is a Professor in the School of Neurobiology, Biochemistry and Biophysics at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, and a leading figure in psychoneuroimmunology. She earned her BSc and MSc in Life Sciences from the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology and her PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science, where she studied how the immune system influences brain repair and neurogenesis. She completed postdoctoral training at Stanford University, supported by a Fulbright Scholarship, researching the role of sleep in memory consolidation and immune function.
Dr. Rolls’ research explores how the brain regulates immunity and how mental states influence the body’s ability to cope with disease. She has pioneered the study of brain-immune interactions, demonstrating that activating the brain’s reward circuitry can boost innate and adaptive immune responses and slow tumor growth. She coined the concept of “immunoception” — the brain’s bidirectional monitoring and control of immunity.
Her honors include multiple European Research Council grants, the Krill Prize, the Rappaport Prize, and selection as one of 40 international Howard Hughes Medical Institute–Wellcome Trust Investigators from 2018 to 2023. She has published in leading journals including Nature Medicine, Nature Neuroscience, and Cell.