Announcing the inaugural Hevolution/AFAR New Investigator Awards in Aging Biology and Geroscience recipients

AFAR is pleased to announce the recipients of the inaugural Hevolution/AFAR New Investigator Awards in Aging Biology and Geroscience.

Eighteen three-year awards of US $375,000 each have been granted to support research projects in basic biology of aging or geroscience — a research paradigm based on addressing the biology of aging and age-related disease to promote healthy aging. The inaugural awards support talented early career investigators with labs worldwide:

• Samuel Beck, PhD, Associate Professor, Boston University School of Medicine: Big data-guided anti-aging drug discovery and its validation
• Charlotte Cecil, PhD, Associate Professor, Erasmus University Medical Center: What makes clocks tick? Mapping determinants of epigenetic age acceleration in early life
• Marco Demaria, PhD, Associate Professor, European Research Institute for the Biology of Ageing (ERIBA): Targeting altered Ca2+ signaling in cellular senescence to extend healthy longevity
• Zhixun Dou, PhD, Assistant Professor, Massachusetts General Hospital: Loss of nuclear proteostasis in senescence and aging
• Peter Douglas, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center: Intracellular lipid surveillance and nuclear hormone receptor dynamics in age determination
• Nir Eynon, PhD, Group Leader, Monash University *as of 05.01.2023: Uncovering sex-specific epigenetic ageing molecules in response to exercise
• Aditi Gurkar, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh: A Nanoscale Detection Tool for Senescence
• Diana Jurk, PhD, Associate Professor, Mayo Clinic: Investigating liver-to-brain transmission of cellular senescence during aging
• Adam Konopka, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison: Interaction of Rapamycin and Exercise on Healthspan
• Sailendra Nichenametla, PhD, Associate Scientist, Orentreich Foundation for the Advancement of Science: Investigating the role of serinogenesis in regulating lipid metabolism
• Miranda Orr, PhD, Assistant Professor, Wake Forest University School of Medicine: Spatial proteogenomic profiling to determine the impact of senescent neurons on the aging brain
• Daniel Roh, PhD, Assistant Professor of Surgery, Boston University School of Medicine: Targeting Wound Senescence to Improve Wound Healing in Aging
• Markus Schosserer, PhD, Junior PI, Medical University of Vienna: Targeting the epitranscriptome to promote healthy lifespan
• Kosaku Shinoda, PhD, Assistant Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine: Proper Control of Inflammatory Cell Death during Aging of Brown Adipose Tissue (BAT)
• Marlene Starr, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Kentucky: The Role of Adipose Tissue-Resident T-Cells in Age-Associated Inflammation and Metabolic Dysfunction
• Stefano Tarantini, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center: Intravital characterization of mitochondrial dysfunction in the aged brain endothelium
• Lindsay Wu, PhD, Senior Research Fellow, University of New South Wales: Overcoming ovarian failure to extend women's health and lifespan
• Ming Xu, PhD, Assistant Professor, UConn Health, UConn Center on Aging and the Department of Genetics & Genome Sciences at UConn School of Medicine: The synergistic benefits of metformin and senolytics on lifespan and healthspan

Learn more about the grant program here.

Discover more of AFAR’s most recent grant recipients here.