What inspired you to pursue aging research?
Aging is a slow and continuous process that we all live in. We can hardly feel the aging process in our daily life. Yet years later when we look in the mirror, we realize we are different from younger selves. Some of us may notice subtle differences in appearance or slightly declined ability in learning, memory, cognition, or physical activities, while others may develop severe symptoms of neurodegeneration, which affect over tens of millions of people worldwide. I am excited about aging research because of its large impact on humankind, for every one of us.
In your view, what does AFAR mean to the field, and what does it mean, for you, to receive an AFAR grant now?
AFAR's efforts to support aging research are driving innovations and breakthroughs to advance healthy aging and delay diseases. The support is particularly vital for research teams who have radically new ideas and plan to explore potentially transformative approaches to address aging. Perhaps due to the early stage and/or exploratory nature of these ideas and approaches, they are often outside the scope of traditional funding mechanisms. As a junior investigator, the grant will not only provide me with generous support to work on new ideas and approaches to address aging but also allow me and my team to access the research resources at AFAR and to interact and collaborate with other aging researchers in the AFAR community.
What is exciting about your research’s potential impact?
The new technologies we are developing can potentially be applied to monitor a variety of aging associated processes in the brain that cannot be measured previously. These efforts may open up a new way to study brain aging and pinpoint crucial targets in the aging process for novel therapeutic interventions.
How would you describe your research to a non-scientist?
A team of bioengineers trying to decode the aging process in the brain by developing and applying new tools to monitor subtle changes across the aging brain.
