Announcing 2025 AFAR Grants for Junior Faculty Recipients

AFAR is pleased to announce the six recipients of the 2025 AFAR Grants for Junior Faculty.

This grant provides an early career investigator with up to $150,000 for one to two years to support research focused on aging processes and age-related diseases. Selected through a rigorous review process, this year’s recipients are exploring a range of topics at research institutions nationwide:

• 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
• Huimin Zhang, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of California, Riverside: Elucidating the Role of HELIOS in Epigenetic Regulation of T Cell Aging and TFH Cell Differentiation
• 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

Other major funders include: AFAR Board of Directors, Anonymous, The James A. and Dorothy R. Brunn Foundation, The Charina Foundation, The Irene Diamond Fund, The Marion Esser Kaufman Foundation, 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.

Learn more about the AFAR Grants for Junior Faculty program here.