Allan Jones

Allan Jones is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Allen Institute, an independent, nonprofit research organization dedicated to answering some of the biggest questions in bioscience and advancing our knowledge to improve human health. Researchers at the Allen Institute study the unknowns of biology with major efforts in the brain, the cell and the immune system.

Jones was one of the Allen Institute’s four founding employees when the nonprofit launched in 2003, originally as the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and took the helm within the first few years to manage its growth and impact, eventually leading the launch of the Institute’s other three scientific divisions. Along with the Allen Institute’s founder, the late philanthropist Paul G. Allen, Jones pioneered a unique approach to neuroscience, and later to other areas of bioscience, through the Institute’s core principles of big science, team science and open science. Jones has continued to champion the need for open data sharing and the broader importance of open science.

Jones’ publications have garnered approximately 1,000 highly influential citations on Semantic Scholar. His 2011 TED Talk: “A map of the brain” has been viewed nearly 1.25 million times. He has advised and helped organize many current U.S. and global neuroscience initiatives, including the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN Initiative, the Human Brain Project and the International Brain Initiative. Jones currently serves on several advisory boards and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Board of Trustees, and he is the former Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Neuroscience and Behavior.

Originally from Wichita, Kansas, Jones received a B.S. in biology from Duke University and a Ph.D. in genetics and developmental biology from Washington University School of Medicine. After a brief period as a post doc at the University of Pennsylvania, Jones joined Avitech Diagnostics, a small start-up company in Philadelphia. He moved to Seattle to work for Rosetta Inpharmatics, which was later acquired by Merck and Co.