2021 Grant Recipients

• Rachel Arey, PhD, Assistant Professor, Baylor College of Medicine: Identifying Neuropeptide Signals that Slow Cognitive Aging
• Annika Barber, PhD, Assistant Professor, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey: Age and high-fat diet interact to accelerate degredation of circadian output signals in Drosophilia melanogaster
• Kristopher Burkewitz, PhD, Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University: Aberrant endoplasmic reticulum dynamics as a driver of age-onset dysfunction
• Chi-Kuo Hu, PhD, Assistant Professor, Stony Brook University: Understanding diapause and its ability to suspend aging in vertebrates
• Janine Kwapis, PhD, Assistant Professor, Pennsylvania State University: Reversing a persistent “nighttime state” that limits memory in aging mice
• Lolita Nidadavolu, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University: The role of IL-6 in promoting skeletal muscle and mitochondrial dysfunction in frailty
• Kosaku Shinoda, PhD, Assistant Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine: Mitochondrial and Molecular Mechanism of Brown Adipose Tissue Regression
• Reyhan Westbrook, PhD, Instructor, Johns Hopkins University: The Effects of Kynurenine Pathway Manipulation on Metabolism and Healthspan in Mice
• Christopher Wiley, PhD, Scientist II, Assistant Professor, Tufts University: Dihomo-gamma-linolenic acid: An endogenous lipid that kills senescent cells
• Tuoqi Wu, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center: Reprogram aged CD8 T cells to reverse immunosenescence

• Bradley Olwin, PhD, Professor, University of Colorado: Improving Skeletal Muscle Stem Cell Health to Rescue Age-Induced Decline of Skeletal Muscle Function
• Andrey Tsvetkov, PhD, Assistant Professor, The University of Texas McGovern Medical School at Houston: G-quadruplex RNA and G-quadruplex RNA helicases in senescent astrocytes
  

• Yann Cormerais, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: Genetic dissection of the insulin/IGF1-mTOR pathway in mammalian aging
• Madison Doolittle, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Mayo Clinic: Investigation of osteo-lineage cells as primary mediators of senescence in the bone microenvironment
• Sooyeon Lee, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford University: The pathophysiological role of Succinate dehydrogenase deficiency in β-cell aging and diabetes
• Claire Leveau, PhD, Postdoctoral Associate, Yale University: Impact of Catechol-O-methyltransferase in the neuro-immune regulation of metabolic disorders
• Yuancheng Lu, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, MIT: A genomic search of novel rejuvenation cocktails
• Pradeep Ramalingam, MD, PhD, Research Associate, Hackensack University Medical College: Rejuvenation of aged hematopoietic stem cells by suppression of bone marrow inflammaging
• Anand Saran, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California San Diego: Using Engineered Native Bacteria To Understand The Relationship Between Altered Microbial Functional Dynamics and Age-Related Circadian Dysmetabolism
• Tina Sing, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California Berkeley: Leveraging gametogenesis-specific rejuvenation pathways to counteract cellular aging
• Yuting Tan, MD, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford University: De-aging the brain by reversing the immuno-metabolism of myeloid cells
• Lei Zhang, PhD, Research Associate, University of Minnesota: Targeting cellular senescence with novel senotherapeutics by design to extend healthspan
• Zeda Zhang, PhD, Research Scholar, Sloan Kettering Institute: Identifying targets for senolytic therapies from the cell surface proteome of senescent cells

• Mariah Calubag, University of Wisconsin-Madison: Regulation of cellular senescence by dietary branched-chain amino acids
• Laura Campbell, University of California San Diego: The role of inflammation in relation to brain morphology and episodic memory among aging adults with HIV
• Matthew Engel, Albert Einstein College of Medicine: Intranasal IGF-1 as a gerotherapeutic strategy against age-related cognitive decline and vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia
• Nathan Gasek, University of Connecticut: Examining p21High Senescent Cell Accumulation in Alzheimer’s Disease Pathogenesis
• Evelynn Henry, University of Michigan: Identifying and Characterizing a Longevity Control Center in the Drosophila Brain
• Shiying Liu, Case Western Reserve University: Leveraging extreme phenotypes and a novel structure-based method to identify genetic variants directly or pleiotropically relevant for Alzheimer's disease
• Matthew Park, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: Single-cell profiling of ontologically distinct macrophages in the aging pulmonary niche
• Jaimin Patel, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine: The Role of PARIS Master Regulator of PGC-1α Expression in the Pathogenesis of Alzheimer's Disease
• Ari Schaler, University of California Los Angeles: Revealing the microglial mitochondrial landscape during aging
• Alice Tao, Weill Cornell Medicine: Longitudinal changes in hypothalamic structure and function in healthy aging and Alzheimer's disease
• Blake Torrance, UConn Health: Investigating the Role of the Senescent Environment in Shaping T cell Immunity following Influenza Vaccination
• Marina Watowich, University of Washington: The effect of natural disaster on peripheral immunological aging

• Lindsay De Biase, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles: Synapse health in cognitive aging: central roles for microglial regulation of extracellular matrix (ECM)
• Saul Villeda, PhD, University of California, San Francisco: Caloric-restriction Induced Mechanisms of Cognitive Rejuvenation

• Junyue Cao, PhD, Assistant Professor, The Rockefeller University: Single-cell transcriptome and epigenome profiling of aging on a whole organismal scale

The 2021 Beeson Scholars are fully funded through the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

• Courtney Balentine, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor, University of Texas Southwestern: A Pilot Study of Local Anesthesia for Inguinal Hernia Surgery in Older Adults
• Scott Bauer, MD, ScM, Assistant Professor of Medicine And Urology, University of California, San Francisco: Age-related changes in skeletal muscle and lower urinary tract symptoms in older adults
• Kavita Dharmarajan, MD, Associate Professor, Radiation Oncology, Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: Improving Outcomes for Older Adults Undergoing Palliative Radiation Treatment
• Jason Falvey, PT, DPT, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland School of Medicine: The ENRICH Study: Engaging Community and Municipal Services to Promote High Quality Aging in Place After Hip Fracture
• Lauren Hunt, PhD, RN, FNP-BC, Assistant Professor, University of California, San Francisco: Hospice Use in Older Adults with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias: Patterns, Policies, and Caregiver Experiences
• Elissa Kozlov, PhD, Instructor of Health, Behavior, Society and Policy, Rutgers School of Public Health: Piloting an mHealth-delivered Mindfulness Therapy with Patients with Serious Illness and their Caregivers to Alleviate Symptoms of Anxiety
• Brienne Miner, MD, MHS, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Yale University: Evaluating Sleep Deficiency in Aging Populations
• Carolyn Presley, MD, MHS, Assistant Professor, The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center: Resiliency among Older Adults Receiving Lung Cancer Treatment: A Supportive Care Intervention Study
• Carmen Quatman, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center: Transformative Solutions for Reducing Frequent 911 Fall Calls in the Homes of Patients with Cognitive Impairments
• Carolyn Seib, MD, MAS, Assistant Professor, Stanford University School of Medicine: Developing a framework to individualize surgical decision-making for older adults with primary hyperparathyroidism
• Sachin Shah, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor, University of California, San Francisco: Individualizing Anticoagulant use in Older Adults with Atrial Fibrillation
• Jasmine Travers, PhD, MHS, RN, AGPCNP-BC, Assistant Professor, New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing: Identifying Unmet Needs Driving Disproportionate and Avoidable Nursing Home Placements among Black and Latino Persons Living with Dementia

MSTAR Students Funded at Weill Cornell Medical College

• Sanam Bhatia, Weill Cornell Medical College: Food insecurity and sarcopenia among older adults with HIV
  
• Hannah Hwang, Weill Cornell Medical College: Real World Outcomes of the ASCRS Preoperative Ocular Surface Disease (OSD) Algorithm in Geriatric Cataract Surgery Patients
  
• Esther Liu, Weill Cornell Medical College: Prescribing Patterns of Falls-Risk Increasing Drugs (FRIDs) in Older Adults Hospitalized for Heart Failure