Elissa A. Hallem is an American neurobiologist. She won a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship.^[1][2] Hallem is Professor and Vice Chair of Graduate Studies in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics at UCLA.^[3]

Elissa Hallem was born in Santa Monica, California, in 1977. In 8th grade she enrolled in a summer program run by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth where she followed a course in psychology held at the Loyola Marymount University at Los Angeles. During high school, she worked in a UCLA lab with professor S. Lawrence Zipursky, a family friend.^{[citation needed]}

Hallem graduated from Williams College with a B.A. in biology and chemistry in 1999, and received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 2005.^[4] She completed her post-doctoral training at California Institute of Technology in 2010.^[1]

• 2012- MacArthur Fellowship^[5]
• 2012- Searle Scholars Program^[6]