2026 Grant Recipients

• Alex Chaim, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of California San Diego: Mechanisms of RNA Damage in Aging Human Neurons
• Jigyue (Ellie) Duan, PhD, Assistant Professor, Cornell University: Evolutionary and Ger-Omics Integration of Sex-Specific Aging Across the Animal Kingdom
• Davis Englund, PhD, Assistant Professor, The University of Alabama at Birmingham: Cytoplasmic p21 as a mechanistic driver of mitochondrial dysfunction during aging
• Jae Ho Lee, PhD*, Assistant Professor, Stony Brook University: Investigating the molecular nature of aberrant translation pausing during aging
• Jenna Leclerc, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Neuroscience, University of Virginia: Sleep-State-Dependent Brain Clearance as a Fundamental Mechanism of Aging
• Natalia Machado, PhD, Assistant Professor, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School: Identification of Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Thermoregulatory Dysfunctions Associated with Aging
• Kevin Rhine, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Arizona: Shipping Delays: Dysfunctional RNA transport in aged neurons
• Drake Williams, DDS, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota: Investigating the spatial dynamics of microbiome-induced inflammaging in barrier tissue

*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.

• Farners Amargant i Riera, PhD, Assistant Professor, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis: Identifying ovarian secreted proteins that drive systemic aging in females
• Romeo Blanc, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison: Rewiring Iron Metabolism to Extend Stem Cell Function and Healthspan
• Wenfei Sun, DSc, Assistant Professor, Stanford University: Restoring the chemical connectome: Mechanisms of peptidergic volume transmission failure in the aging brain
• Wei Wei, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison: Decoding aging through cell-type-specific secretomics

• Erika Cyphert, PhD, Assistant Professor of Shu Chien-Gene Lay Bioengineering Department, Jacobs School of Engineering, University of California San Diego: Uncovering how reproductive aging influences host-microbe metabolic interactions