Announcing 2026 AFAR Grants for Junior Faculty Recipients

AFAR is pleased to announce the eight recipients of the 2026 AFAR Grants for Junior Faculty.

This grant provides an early career investigator with up to $160,000 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:

• Alex Chaim, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of California San Diego: Mechanisms of RNA Damage in Aging Human Neurons
• Jingyue (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
• Jenna Leclerc, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Neuroscience, University of Virginia: Dependent Brain Clearance as a Fundamental Mechanism of Aging
• Jae Ho Lee, PhD*, Assistant Professor, Stony Brook University: Investigating the molecular nature of aberrant translation pausing during 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.

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