Eran Elinav (Hebrew: ערן אלינב; born 22 June 1969 in Jerusalem, Israel) is an Israeli immunologist[1] and microbiota researcher[2] at the Weizmann Institute of Science[3] and the DKFZ.

He served as a senior physician-scientist at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center Institute of Gastroenterology and Liver Disease in 2005–2009.

[2] In 2009 Elinav earned a Ph.D. in immunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science, advised by Zelig Eshhar, after developing the Chimeric Antigen Receptor Regulatory T cell (CAR-Treg) approach,[7] as treatment of inflammatory bowel disease and autoimmunity.

Elinav studies the molecular basis of host-microbiota interactions,[10] and their effects of diet,[11][12] environmental factors,[13] immune function[14] and host genetics[15] on the intestinal microbiome and associated multi-factorial metabolic,[16][17] inflammatory,[18] malignant[19] and neurogenerative disease.

[41] Elinav discovered, that the gut microbiota features a compositional and functional diurnal activity during a 24-hour cycle, which is dictated by host and environmental factors, mainly by the timing in food consumption.