our team

Vera Gorbunova is an endowed Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester and a co-director of the Rochester Aging Research Center. Her research is focused on understanding the mechanisms of longevity and genome stability and on the studies of exceptionally long-lived mammals. Dr. Gorbunova earned her B.Sc. degrees at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia and her Ph.D. at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Dr. Gorbunova pioneered a comparative biology approach to study aging and identified rules that control evolution of tumor suppressor mechanisms depending on the species lifespan and body mass. Dr. Gorbunova investigates the role of Sirtuin proteins in maintaining genome and epigenome stability. She also investigates the role of genomic instability and transposable elements in aging and disease. She demonstrated that LINE1 elements trigger innate immune responses that drive age-related sterile inflammation. She has more than 100 publications including publications in high profile journals such as Nature, Science and Cell. Her work received awards from the Ellison Medical Foundation, the Glenn Foundation, American Federation for Aging Research, and from the National Institutes of Health. Her work was awarded the Cozzarelli Prize from PNAS, prize for research on aging from ADPS/Alianz, France, Prince Hitachi Prize in Comparative Oncology, Japan, and Davey prize from Wilmot Cancer Center.

Dr. Andrei Seluanov is a Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester. Dr. Seluanov’s research is focused on understanding the mechanisms of longevity and genome stability and on the studies of exceptionally long-lived and cancer-resistant mammals. He earned his BSc degree at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia and PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Dr. Seluanov applies comparative biology approach to study aging and identified rules that control evolution of tumor suppressor mechanisms depending on the species lifespan and body mass. More recently the focus of his research has been on the longest-lived rodent species, the naked mole rats and the blind mole rat. Seluanov’s group identified high molecular weight hyaluronan as the key mediator of cancer-resistance in the naked mole rat. Dr. Seluanov also demonstrated that DNA double strand break repair becomes less efficient with aging and cellular senescence which leads to genomic instability and cancer, and this decline is rescued by Sirtuin 6. Seluanov’s work has been published in high profile journals including Nature and Science. He received awards from the Ellison Medical Foundation, Life Extension Foundation and from the National Institutes of Health. The work on cancer-resistance in the naked mole rat was awarded the Cozzarelli Prize from PNAS for outstanding scientific excellence and originality, Prince Hitachi Prize in Comparative Oncology (Japan), and Davey Prize from the University of Rochester Wilmot Cancer Center.

Vadim Gladyshev is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Redox Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and faculty member of the Broad Institute. Dr. Gladyshev’s lab focuses on studying aging, rejuvenation and lifespan control using a combination of experimental and computational approaches. He has published more than 450 articles. Dr. Gladyshev is the recipient of NIH Pioneer, Transformative and Eureka awards and is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

Prof. Emma Teeling is an international leader in the cross-cutting fields of mammalian phylogenetics and comparative genomics, with particular expertise in bat biology. She established the Laboratory of Molecular Evolution and Mammalian Phylogenetics in 2005, is a Founding Director of the genome consortium Bat1K and the Full Professor of Zoology, UCD.. She has pioneered wild bats as new models of extended healthspan uniting field, molecular, cellular and genomic studies to uncover how bats slow down expected ageing and resist disease. She has been awarded prestigious personal grants to pursue this research- European Research Council (ERC) Starting grant (2013-2018), a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), President of Ireland Young Researcher Award (2006-2012), an Irish Research Council (IRC) Laureate Award (2018-2022), an SFI Future Frontiers Award (2020-2025), and an ERC Synergy grant (2024-2030) as lead PI. She successfully leads a prolific, internationally renowned research team of typically 10 people and has secured >€18M in research funding. Her record of leadership and research excellence is demonstrated by her publication record of >145 internationally peer-reviewed papers, 6 book chapters, 4 invited subject reviews. A number of these publications have over-turned conventional paradigms in mammalian biology and therefore have been published in high profile journals such as Nature (n=4), Science (n=18), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (n=4), Nature Communications (n=2), Nature Ecology and Evolution (n=2), Science Advances (n=2), Cell (n=1). Her high standing in the international community is highlighted by a total citation record of 18413 citations (Google Scholar Sep 2024); prestigious international keynote lectures; invited high profile collaborations such as Genome 10K (includes 64 scientific leaders assembled to sequence 10,000 vertebrate genomes); and, high profile invited public presentations (e.g. TED talk; ~ 576,690 views; EU Parliament; World Economic Forum, Davos; BBC’s Science Club with Dara Ó Briain, Royal Institute Christmas Lectures, NOVA documentary on PBS); nomination to prestigious academic boards and institutes (e.g. Irish Research Council Board, 2015-2022; Member of Royal Irish Academy, 2016; Board of Directors Dublin Zoo 2022-2025). She has been awarded Chevalier des Palmes Académiques, 2017 by the French Government; the Murray Lectureship, University of Sydney (2022); Miller Award (2023) North American Bat Research Society, and Commended Irish Research Council Researcher of the Year Award (2023), for her research.

Steven Austad is a Distinguished Professor and the Inaugural Protective Life Endowed Chair in Healthy Aging Research in the Department of Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) where he was Department Chair from 2014-2022. He is also founding Director and current Co-director of UAB’s Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging and has been Scientific Director of the New York-based American Federation for Aging Research for the past decade. Having published more than 200 scientific papers, Dr. Austad’s aging research, which ranges from the level of cells to the impact on society, has won multiple awards, including the National Institute on Aging’s Nathan A. Shock Award, the Robert W. Kleemeier Award, the Fondation IPSEN Longevity Prize, and the Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New York Academy of Medicine, and the Gerontological Society of America. With an abiding interest in communicating science to the general public, he has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of National Public Radio and written more than 150 op-eds and essays for electronic and print media, including the Huffington Post, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, and Salon. He has also written four trade books -- Why We Age (1997) has been translated into nine languages, Real People Don’t Own Monkeys (2002, co-authored with his wife, J. Veronika Kiklevich), To Err is Human, To Admit It is Not and Other Essays (2022) and Methuselah’s Zoo: What Nature Can Teach Us about Living Longer, Healthier Lives (2022). Before his career in science, he put food on the table by driving taxis in New York City and training lions for the Hollywood movie industry.

David Gems is a Professor of Biogerontology (the scientific study of the biology of aging) at the Institute of Healthy Ageing, University College London. He graduated from Sussex University and then conducted research at Glasgow University, Imperial College, and the University of Missouri-Columbia, where in 1993 he began working on the biology of aging in C. elegans, with Prof. Don Riddle. He set up his own research group at UCL in 1997 with the support of a fellowship from the Royal Society. Much of his work uses the nematode worm C. elegans to understand the fundamental mechanisms that cause the ageing process. He has also contributed to studies of aging in other nematodes, Drosophila, and the mouse, and penned articles on the ethics of aging research. He is a founder member and Research Director of the UCL Institute of Healthy Ageing, and has contributed to some 150 articles, mostly on ageing. He is the author of the upcoming book “On Aging: What Causes it and How it Leads to the Maladies of Old Age”. Ageing is now the main cause of serious illness worldwide, yet its underlying biology remains poorly understood. Research using animal models has shown that it is possible to intervene in aging and slow it down, thereby increasing late-life health and extending lifespan. It is envisaged that this work will contribute to the future development of preventative approaches to diseases of human ageing, such as cardiovascular disease, late life dementias, cancer and many others, thereby achieving major gains in terms of improved late life health and well being.

Prof. de Magalhaes graduated in Microbiology in 1999 from the Escola Superior de Biotecnologia in his hometown of Porto, Portugal, and then in 2004 obtained a PhD from the University of Namur in Belgium. Following a postdoc with genomics pioneer Prof George Church at Harvard Medical School, in 2008 Prof de Magalhaes joined the University of Liverpool, and in 2022, he was recruited to the University of Birmingham as Chair of Molecular Biogerontology. He currently leads the Genomics of Ageing and Rejuvenation Lab (https://rejuvenomicslab.com/) in the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing. His lab studies the aging process and how we can manipulate it to fend off age-related diseases and improve human health. Prof de Magalhaes has authored over 100 publications and given over 200 invited talks, including three TEDx talks. He also makes regular media appearances (BBC, CNN, the Washington Post, the Financial Times and many others). Prof de Magalhaes is an advisor/consultant for various organizations, including nonprofit foundations, universities, investment funds and biotech companies, and he is a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford. He was CSO of Swiss-based biotech company Centaura until 2021 and is currently CSO of YouthBio Therapeutics, a US-based biotech company developing rejuvenation gene therapies based on partial reprogramming by Yamanaka factors.

Tae Seok Moon is a full professor at J. Craig Venter Institute, an EBRC (Engineering Biology Research Consortium) Council Member, a SynBYSS (Synthetic Biology Young Speaker Series) Chair, a founder of Moonshot Bio, an Executive Board Member of the European Federation of Biotechnology, and an editor of 10 journals, including the Editor-in-Chief of New Biotechnology and the Executive Editor of Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology. He has expertise in Systems and Synthetic Biology. He aims to solve global agricultural, environmental, manufacturing, and health problems through engineering biology. His research projects have been supported by Gates Foundation, AIChE, and 13 governmental funding agencies (27 external grants), and he has secured >$10.7M ($38.4M for the entire team since 2013). These projects and his prior research efforts have resulted in 96 publications (85 as the PI), 211 invited talks, 184 additional contributed conference presentations, and 10 patents. His achievements have also been recognized with many awards, including a Langer Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Excellence (AIChE & MIT), a B&B Daniel I.C. Wang Award (Wiley & ACS), an NSF CAREER award, an ONR Young Investigator Award, a John C. Sluder Fellowship (MIT), an ILJU Foundation Award, an LG Chemical Fellowship, and the SNU President Prize.

Dr. John Glass is a Professor in the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) where he leads the Synthetic Biology and Bioenergy Group. He is also Director of the JCVI La Jolla campus. Glass’s research team created a minimal bacterial cell with a genome comprising only the essential genes necessary for life in rich laboratory media called JCVI-syn3.0. This simplest of all microbes encodes genes from the caprine pathogen, Mycoplasma mycoides subspecies capri. Glass’s JCVI team as well as more than 80 other research teams are using this cell to investigate the first principles of cellular life. Additionally, from the lessons learned through building a synthetic cell with a minimal gene set the JCVI synthetic biologists hope to design and create cells with extraordinary properties that address human needs in medicine, bioenergy and the environment. Glass also directs JCVI teams that are investigating how viruses defeat antiviral components of the human innate immune system, developing a new treatment for type I diabetes based on the human skin microbiome, developing new methods for synthesis of human artificial chromosomes, and constructing large genome phage that encode gene sets to enable their use as antibacterial therapeutics. Glass earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before joining the JCVI in 2003, he worked in the Infectious Diseases Research Therapeutic Area at the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly from 1998-2003. Glass joined the JCVI in 2003.

Shahaf Peleg received his PhD from the University of Göttingen, Germany in 2010. He later did his postdoctoral training at the University of Munich where he focused on metabolism – epigenetics connectivity during early aging. Since 2018, his laboratory at the FBN where he is researching molecular changes that are associated with the progression of aging. He currently works on the concept of energy replacement to extend healthy longevity by enabling metazoans to harness the energy of light and translate it to chemical energy in their mitochondria.

Dr. Lingyan Shi is a Sloan Research Fellow, Scialog Fellow, and Hellman Fellow, currently serving as a tenured Associate Professor in the Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering at UC San Diego. 

She joined UCSD in 2019, following her postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Chemistry at Columbia University. Her lab focuses on developing high-resolution metabolic nanoscopy to study aging processes and related diseases. Notably, she discovered the "Golden Window" for deep tissue imaging and pioneered the "DO-SRS" metabolic imaging platform, which visualizes metabolic dynamics in cells and tissues. At UC San Diego, her group further advanced stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy into super-resolution multiplex nanoscopy by developing A-PoD and PRM algorithms, revealing various lipid metabolic changes in organ tissues during aging and disease. 

Dr. Shi holds 10 awarded patents and 8 pending. She won Blavatnik Regional Award for Young Scientists (2018), Nature Light Science & Applications’ Rising Star Award (2021), the Advancing Bioimaging Scialog Fellow Award 2023, the David L. Williams Lecture & Scholarship Award (2023), the Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry (2023), the BMES-Cellular Molecular Bioengineering Rising Star Faculty Award (2024), the Davos Summit iCANx Young Scientist Award (2024), and Featured in the 2025 Global Woman in Optics notebook.

Joshua Rabinowitz is Professor of Chemistry & Integrative Genomics at Princeton University and the founding Director of the Ludwig Princeton Branch. He brings a quantitative, chemical perspective to the study of diet, metabolism and disease. His research focuses on two broad questions: What are the quantitative concentrations and flows (fluxes) in metabolic pathways? How are they controlled? To address these questions, his lab develops innovative technologies that blend mass spectrometry, isotope tracers, and computational data integration. These technologies have been broadly applied to address major biomedical problems, including diabetes, infectious disease, and cancer.

After obtaining his MD and a PhD in biophysics from Stanford University, Dr. Rabinowitz founded Alexza Pharmaceuticals and served as its Vice President for Research until 2004, when he then joined Princeton University. He was tenured in 2009 and promoted to full Professor in 2011. Since 2008, he has also been a Member of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. He is author of > 300 journal articles and inventor of > 100 patents, and has been recognized with the NIH Pioneer, Agilent Thought Leader, and Allen Distinguished Investigator Awards.

Prof. Oliver Fiehn has pioneered developments and applications in metabolomics with over 470 publications to date with a current h-index 125, i10 index 432. He started his career as group leader at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam, Germany. Since 2004 he is faculty member in the College of Biological Sciences (MCB department) and Professor at the UC Davis Genome Center, overseeing his research laboratory and the satellite core service laboratory in metabolomics research. In 2012 he became the Director of the UC Davis West Coast Metabolomics Center, supervising 35 staff operating 17 mass spectrometers. To focus on large cohort studies and translational metabolomics, he has added the ThermoFisher Center of Excellence in Clinical Metabolomics at the UC Davis clinical campus in Sacramento, CA since 2021. In public outreach, the West Coast Metabolomics Center holds monthly public webinars, has a YouTube channel, a newsletter, invites international scholars to research visits and organizes three metabolomics professional courses per year.

Benjamin A. Garcia is a Raymond H. Wittcoff Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The Garcia lab has been developing and applying novel proteomic approaches and bioinformatics for interrogating protein modifications, especially those involved in epigenetic mechanisms such as histones during human disease, publishing over 425 publications. He is presently an Associate Editor of the Analytical Chemistry, and Mass Spectrometry Reviews journals; and serves on the editorial boards for the Molecular Omics, the Journal of Proteome Research and the Molecular and Cellular Proteomics journals. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the U.S. Human Proteome Organization (HUPO), the HUPO Governing Council/Executive Committee and the Executive Committee of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Analytical Chemistry Division. Ben has been recognized with many honors and awards for his mass spectrometry research including the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) Research Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the PITTCON Achievement Award, the Ken Standing Award, the ACS Arthur F. Findeis Award, The Protein Society Young Investigator Award, the ASMS Biemann Medal, the HUPO Discovery in Proteomic Sciences Award, the Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS) Outstanding Achievement in Mass Spectrometry Award and was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Ed Boyden is Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology at MIT, an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the MIT McGovern Institute, and professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Media Arts and Sciences, and Biological Engineering at MIT. He leads the Synthetic Neurobiology Group, which develops ground truth-oriented tools for analyzing and repairing the brain, and applies them systematically to reveal fundamental mechanisms underlying brain functions, as well as to repair the brain. One ultimate goal of the group is to create biologically accurate computer simulations of entire brains, starting with small brains like those of worms and fish, and ultimately pointing towards the human brain. He co-directs the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering and is a faculty member of the MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences, Computational & Systems Biology Initiative, and Koch Institute.

Ed received his Ph.D. in neurosciences from Stanford University as a Hertz Fellow. In parallel to his PhD, as an independent side project, he co-invented optogenetic control of neurons, which is now used throughout neuroscience. Previously, he studied chemistry at the Texas Academy of Math and Science at the University of North Texas, starting college at age 14, where he worked in Paul Braterman’s group on origins of life chemistry. He went on to earn three degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, and physics, from MIT, graduating at age 19, while working on quantum computing in Neil Gershenfeld’s group. Long-term, he hopes that understanding how the brain generates the mind will help provide a deeper understanding of the human condition, and help humanity achieve a more enlightened state.

Vadim Gladyshev is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Redox Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and faculty member of the Broad Institute. Dr. Gladyshev’s lab focuses on studying aging, rejuvenation and lifespan control using a combination of experimental and computational approaches. He has published more than 450 articles. Dr. Gladyshev is the recipient of NIH Pioneer, Transformative and Eureka awards and is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

Michael Levin is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts University, and associate faculty at Harvard’s Wyss Institute. He serves as the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts and the co-director of the Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms at Tufts/UVM. His work spans developmental biology, computer science, and philosophy of mind. Dr. Levin received dual B.S. degrees in computer science and biology, followed by a Ph.D. from Harvard. His group at Tufts works to understand information processing and problem-solving across scales, in a range of naturally evolved, synthetically engineered, and hybrid living systems. Using tools from behavioral and computer sciences, Dr. Levin seeks to understand the collective intelligence of cells and harness their problem-solving capacities for applications in birth defects, regeneration, cancer, and synthetic bioengineering. The Levin lab has pioneered approaches to organ regeneration, cancer reprogramming, non-genetic modification of the body plan, and the engineering of novel living proto-organisms. They developed the first molecular tools to read and write bioelectric pattern memories in non-neural tissues, and are using endogenous bioelectricity as an interface to target injury and aging.

Prof. Uri Alon earned his BSc in physics and mathematics, and his MSc in physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was awarded his PhD in physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science and was a postdoctoral fellow in experimental biology in the Departments of Physics and Molecular Biology at Princeton University. 

Prof.Alon works at the interface between physics and biology and is one of the founders of the field of systems biology. 

His recent research focuses on human physiology, aging and systems medicine. Professor Alon received the 2014 Nakasone prize, the Jacques Solvay Chair in Physics in 2017, the Michael Bruno Memorial Award in 2009, and many more.

Prof. Gruber’s interest in aging and age-related diseases began in 1999 when he completed his Master of Advanced Studies in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (Part III of the Mathematical Tripos) at the University of Cambridge (UK). He then joined the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics in the Department of Biochemistry at Oxford University (UK), where he developed tools to study protein-protein interactions and rational drug design. After earning his D.Phil. In Biochemistry in 2004, Dr. Gruber moved to Singapore to work as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Barry Halliwell at the National University of Singapore (NUS). There, he focused on the role of oxidative damage and mitochondrial dysfunction in aging. In 2012, Dr. Gruber became an inaugural faculty member at Yale-NUS College, where his research group explored pharmacological interventions targeting the fundamental mechanisms of aging, with a particular emphasis on drug-drug interactions. In 2023, he returned to NUS to join the Healthy Longevity Translational Research Programme (HLTRP). Dr. Gruber’s current research focuses on clinical biomarkers and aging clocks, utilizing mathematical modeling and machine learning techniques to analyze -omics data from both model organisms and human patients.

Professor Andreas Beyer is a distinguished systems biologist currently serving as a Professor of Systems Biology at the University of Cologne, Germany, a position he has held since 2013. In 2024, he assumed the role of Speaker for the Collaborative Research Center 1678, focusing on "Systems-level consequences of fidelity changes in mRNA and protein biosynthesis." His academic journey began with a Ph.D. from the University of Osnabrück, Germany, completed between 1999 and 2002. Prof. Beyer's career includes a brief stay at the Canadian Environmental Modelling Centre in Peterborough, Canada, in 2000. From 2002 to 2006, he pursued post-doctoral research at the Leibniz-Institute for Age Research in Jena and at the University of California San Diego, working with Prof. Trey Ideker. His leadership skills were further honed as a group leader at the Biotechnology Center, TU Dresden, Germany, from 2007 to 2012. Prof. Beyer's research trajectory demonstrates a consistent focus on systems biology and molecular processes with a specific focus on the biology of aging, contributing significantly to the field through his diverse international experiences and collaborations.

Peter Fedichev is a pioneering scientist and entrepreneur whose career bridges theoretical physics and biotechnology. Trained as a physicist, Peter completed his M.S. in theoretical physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, specializing in condensed matter and complex systems. He later pursued a Ph.D. at the University of Amsterdam, graduating cum laude. His early research contributions—garnering numerous citations and a place in top-tier journals like Science—spanned condensed matter physics and advanced theories in complex systems.

Transitioning to biophysics, Peter began applying physics-based methods to unlock insights into aging biology. He has led efforts to develop analytical models that differentiate reversible and entropic aspects of aging, bringing new depth to our understanding of the aging process. His research has identified fundamental limits of life-extension, guiding future therapeutic directions. Recognized as a leading theorist in aging science, Peter has also co-authored multiple patents.

As an entrepreneur, Peter co-founded Gero, a biotechnology startup that leverages artificial intelligence to advance aging research and chronic disease treatment. Gero’s cutting-edge models analyze health trajectories and predict biological aging, advancing treatments designed to extend healthy lifespan. Under Peter’s leadership, Gero has secured collaborations with major pharmaceutical companies, positioning it at the forefront of longevity biotech.