2025 Grant Recipients

• Jacob Brown, PhD*, Assistant Professor, Florida State University: Are oxylipins a therapeutic target to improve recovery from disuse-atrophy during aging?
• Ang Cui, PhD, Assistant Professor of Developmental Biology, Harvard Medical School: Decoding cytokine-driven hematopoietic stem cell fate in aging
• Madison Doolittle, PhD**, Assistant Professor, University of Connecticut Health Center: Premature aging and residual senescence after injury resolution
  
• Sija He, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Texas Health San Antonio: Investigating the Role of Brain Innate Immunity in Regulating Peripheral Aging
• Meng Zhang, PhD, Assistant Professor, Scripps Research: Exploring neuro-immune crosstalk with spatial multi-omics

*Underwritten partially by the Marion Esser Kaufmann Foundation

**Underwritten fully by the Hearst Foundations

Additional funders of the AFAR Grants for Junior Faculty include: AFAR Board of Directors, Anonymous, The James A. and Dorothy R. Brunn Foundation, The Charina Foundation, The Irene Diamond Fund, David W. Gore, Diana Jacobs Kalman, The Lowell F. Johnson Foundation, Irving Kahn Fund, Diane Nixon Fund, Sami Sagol, and The Irving S. Wright Endowment.

• Lina Marcela Carmona, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School: The Role of Neuronal Glycolysis in the Aging Motor Circuit
• Hanna Martens, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of California San Francisco: Targeting Thymic Involution: Novel Solutions for Age-Related Immune Decline
• Joe Nassour, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Colorado School of Medicine: Probing Membrane Contact Sites as Drivers of Senescence-Associated Inflammation
• Jennifer Tuscher, PhD, Assistant Professor, Medical College of Wisconsin: Identification and restoration of estradiol-mediated gene programs in the aging brain

• Christina Camell, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Minnesota: Macrophage inflammation; cellular identity and healthspan during aging
• Elaine Fuchs, PhD, Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor, The Rockefeller University: Staying youthful by preventing tissues from retaining life-long memories of past inflammatory experiences

• Richard Giadone, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University: Pharmacologic Recapitulation of Parabiosis to Improve the Aging Central Nervous System
• Paula Godoy, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of California San Diego: Rejuvenating Aged Hematopoietic Stem Cells Through Multimodal Single-Cell Approaches
• Nils Grotehans, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School: A Novel Strategy to Restore Mitochondrial Function in Aging
• Airat Ibragimov, PhD, Postdoctoral Associate, University of Rochester: Putting aging on pause: targeting SIRT6 and CDK9 to ameliorate age-related transcriptional dysregulation
• Jingyun Luan, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Chicago: Decoding epigenetic regulation to rejuvenate aging-induced stem cell exhaustion
• Tianji Ma, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California, San Francisco: Homeostatic regulation of protein-specific appetite in aging
• Nalini Rao, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Gladstone Institutes: Elucidating how aging impairs brain proteostasis and protein clearance.
• Vinaya Sahasrabuddhe, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: Investigating the Plasticity and Role of Microglia in Brain Aging
• Jorge Sanz Ros, MD, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford University: Investigating the Role of Aging and Senescence in Astrocyte-Mediated Synapse Phagocytosis
• Xifan Wang, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Columbia University Medical Center: Role of gut microbiota in mediating the beneficial effects of rapamycin in delaying female reproductive aging
• Honggui Wu, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellowship, McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT: Development of High-Throughput Single-Cell DNA Methylation Clock Profiling
• Qiang Xiao, PhD, Postdoctoral Associate, The Scripps Research Institute: Reversing neuronal aging by activating declined autophagy in aged neurons

• Amanat Ali, PharmD, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Albert Einstein College of Medicine: Identification and Characterization of Functional Coding Variants in Human Longevity Pathways
• Walker Hoolehan, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation: Identifying single-molecule epigenetic modification patterns regulating age-associated neuroinflammatory gene expression programs
• Sooyeon Lee, PhD, Instructor, Stanford University: The pathophysiological role of Succinate Dehydrogenase deficiency in β-cell aging and diabetes
• Ryan Marshall, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison: Exploring mTORC1-dependent mechanisms of lipidome remodeling in aging skeletal muscle through resistance training and isoleucine restriction
• Omer Sharon, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California Berkeley: The role of sleep-dependent glymphatic brain clearance in human aging
• Lilian Silva, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Saint Louis University: Non-canonical roles of cGAS-STING in aging
• Gunjan Singh, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Brown University: Determining the role of Dosage Compensation Complex in regulation of sex-specific aging of brain
• Yuting Tan, PhD, Instructor, Stanford University: Targeting glycosylation defects to restore efferocytosis and reverse aging
• Hongyang Xu, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation: Role of iPLA2 on store operated Ca2+ entry (SOCE) and muscle force generation during aging
• Jiping Yang, PhD, Associate Research Scientist, Columbia University Medical Center: Centenarian regulatory variants-guided discovery of therapeutic targets for healthy aging

• Brieann Brown, Virginia Tech: Elucidating the mechanism controlling histone H2B monoubiquitination dependent rescue of age-related memory loss
• Aeowynn Coakley, University of Southern California: Determining the Role of the Actin Cytoskeleton in a Vertebrate Model with Age
• Ruben De Man, Yale School of Medicine: Ex vivo modeling of lung aging and cellular senescence
• Muzi Du, Johns Hopkins University: Age-Dependent Defect in Nucleocytoplasmic Transport as a Potential Mechanism of TDP-43 Loss-of-Function in Alzheimer's Disease with Limbic-Predominant Age-Related TDP-43 Encephalopathy
• Bernardo Garduno, University of California Irvine: Decoding Sub-Second Behavioral Signatures; Biomarkers; and Cognitive States Across the Aging Octodon degus
• Yi Guan, Boston University School of Medicine: Sex-Dependent Effects of APOE4 on Blood-Brain and Blood- CSF Barrier Dysfunction in Brain Aging
• Rodaina Hazem Monieb, Creighton University: Unraveling the role of the progeroid protein BubR1 in regulating intestinal stem cell function and epithelial turnover with age
• Emily Holy, University of California, Davis: Total-body PET Amyloid Signal and Links Across Multiple Organs in Alzheimer's Disease
• In Hwa Jang, University of Minnesota: GDF3 limits heterochromatin formation to promote inflammaging
• Michelle Jin, Columbia University Irving Medical Center: Circadian and brain-wide activity signatures of age-dependent sundowning in an Alzheimer's mouse model
• Alireza Khoddammohammadi, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine: Spatial Compartmentalization Of Plasminogen Activator- 1 in Cardiovascular Aging
• Xinyue Lu, Purdue University: Tackling Sarcopenia: Can Deuterated Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids Combat Skeletal Muscle Wasting Driven by Oxidative Stress
• Eric McGregor, University of Wisconsin-Madison: Metabolism of tauopathy: new targets and new therapeutic development
• Jack Medico, The Rockefeller University: Comprehensive characterization of vertebrate telomeres and their role in aging.
• Laura Miller, Utah State University: Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD) Levels and Their Contribution to Bone Aging: Therapeutic Potential of Vitamin B3 supplementation
• Ali Nasrollahzadeh, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center: Telomerase Reactivation as a Therapeutic Strategy to Reverse Hematopoietic Stem Cell Aging
• JinYoung Park, University of Oklahoma Health Science Center/Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation: Epigenetic regulation in neural stem cell maintenance and aging-related exhaustion
• Ananya Pavuluri, Brown University: The link between lncRNAs and aging: an investigation through interpretable deep learning and the Drosophila melanogaster model
• Akanksha Sachan, University of Pittsburgh: Multi-omics Machine Learning for Inferring Metabolic-Epigenetic Interactions in the aging skeletal muscle
• Lindsey Sime, Michigan State University: Characterizing the Neurobiological Impact of Endocrine Aging in Amyloid-Enhanced Tauopathy
• Ngan Tran, Mayo Clinic: Utilizing Long-read Sequencing to Characterize Mitochondrial DNA variations in Healthy Brain Aging

• Leah Acker, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Duke University: Inflammatory Hangover and Cognitive Aging
• Erin Gibson, PhD, Assistant Professor, Stanford School of Medicine: NSPR1 as an intersectional regulator of myelin and cognition in aging
  

• Dheeraj Roy, PhD, Assistant Professor, University at Buffalo: Anterior thalamic mechanisms underlying cognitive decline with age

The 2025 Beeson Scholars are fully funded through the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

• Cecilia Canales, MD, Assistant Professor, University of California, Los Angeles: Improving Postsurgical Cognitive Outcomes in Limited English Proficient Older Adults with a Perioperative Care Partner Program: A Pilot Pragmatic Randomized Controlled Trial
• Keith Cole, PT, PhD, DPT, Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University Medical Center: The Proteomic Signature of Dual Decline in Gait and Cognition
• W. James Deardorff, MD, Assistant Professor, University of California, San Francisco: Enhancing prognosis communication for older adults in skilled nursing facilities
• Hina Faisal, MD, Assistant Professor, Houston Methodist Hospital: Virtual Reality-Based Cognitive Stimulation Games for Enhancing Attention and Preventing Delirium in Older Surgical Patients with Cognitive Impairment: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial
• Cameron Gettel, MD, MHS, Assistant Professor, Yale University School of Medicine: Development and pilot testing of a novel text messaging intervention to improve emergency department care transitions among care partners of persons living with cognitive impairment
• Maria Lucia Madariaga, MD, Associate Professor, University of Chicago: BeFitMe II: Applying User-Centered Co-Design and Implementation Science to Enhance Prehabilitation for Frail Older Adults Undergoing Lung Cancer Surgery
• Shannon McCurdy, MD, Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania: The Impact of Frailty on Disease Relapse and Therapy Intensity in Older Adults with Acute Myeloid Leukemia: Biomarkers and Treatment Selection
• Christopher Mosher, MHS, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Duke University: Investigating Senolytic Properties in Pulmonary Rehabilitation and Metformin in COPD Exacerbations (INSPIRE-COPD-E).
• Krishna Patel, MD, Assistant Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: Opportunistic use of existing chest CT data for frailty screening
• Sandra Shi, MD, MPH, Instructor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School: Strengthening Recovery - Integrating Intrinsic Capacity Care into Post-Acute Skilled Nursing Facilities
• Lisa Simon, MD, DMD, Assistant Professor, Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School: Evaluating the effect of a new Medicare dental benefit on the health of older adults

Third Cohort

• Huan Bao, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Virginia: Molecular mechanisms of Annexin-mediated membrane repair in preventing premature senescence
• Itay Budin, PhD, Associate Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics, University of California San Diego: Functional roles of plasmalogens and their loss in aging cell membranes
• Junyue Cao, PhD, Associate Professor, The Rockefeller University: Decipher the Cell Regulatory Network of Mammalian Aging at the Scale of the Whole Organism
• Brianne Connizzo, PhD, Assistant Professor in Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering, Boston University: Senescence Disrupts Tissue Remodeling and Repair
• Jia Guo, PhD, Assistant Professor, Columbia University: Mapping the Spatial-Temporal Patterns of Normal Brain Aging Using Multi-Site T1w Structural MRI and AI-Driven CBV Analysis
• Ramin Herati, MD, Assistant Professor, NYU Grossman School of Medicine: Echoes of the past: mechanisms of poor vaccine responses due to age-associated inflammation
• Weishan Huang, PhD, Associate Professor, Louisiana State University: Mechanisms of Lung Immune Memory Decline During Aging
• Emma Johnson, PhD, Assistant Professor, Washington University School of Medicine: Elucidating environmental context-dependent genetic variation related to aging and lifespan in humans
• Hongjie Li, PhD, Assistant Professor, Baylor College of Medicine: Building Systematic Brain-Body Communication and Personalized Aging Trajectories
• Katharina Maisel, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Maryland: Investigating changes in the physical environment in the lymph node that alter immune cell functions in aging
• Jerome Mertens, PhD, Associate Professor, University of California San Diego: Metabolic regulation of resilience in aging human neurons
• Hadi Nia, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University: Inflammaging in the Lung: Dissecting the Impact of Aging on pulmonary vs. circulatory factors
• Mattia Quattrocelli, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Cincinnati: The Carnosine Clock Ticks for Healthy Aging
• Jason Sheltzer, PhD, Assistant Professor, Stanford University: Investigating loss of the Y chromosome as a targetable driver of aging-related pathologies
• Noah Snyder-Mackler, PhD, Associate Professor, Arizona State University: Molecular causes and consequences of inter- and intra-individual heterogeneity in aging
• Peter van Galen, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital: Hematopoietic Stem Cell Diversity Driving Age-Associated Inflammation
• Deborah Winter, PhD, Associate Professor, Northwestern University: Understanding the role of noisy chromatin deregulation in aging macrophages
• Tuoqi Wu, PhD, Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center: Understand FOXP1 as a gatekeeper of T cell aging