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SPEAKERS ARDD 2024
Leaders in the aging and longevity field will describe the latest progress in the molecular, cellular and organismal basis of aging and our search for interventions.
Kotb Abdelmohsen
National Institute on Aging,
National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA
Dr. Kotb Abdelmohsen received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany. His postdoctoral work at the NIH's National Institute on Aging (NIA) focused on post-transcriptional gene regulation. His research explores the roles of RNA-binding proteins and noncoding RNAs in gene expression, crucial for understanding stress responses, senescence, and aging.

As a Senior Associate Scientist at NIA, Dr. Abdelmohsen investigates RNA modifications, stability, and translation, focusing on the interaction between RNA-binding proteins and RNA sequences in the context of aging and age-related diseases. His research spans both coding and noncoding RNAs, exploring their impact on cell growth, aging, and senescence. Further, Dr. Abdelmohsen is investigating extracellular vesicles and particles from various organs and cells including the human trophoblast stem cells to advance our understanding of cellular aging and senescence. Leveraging the unique features of these nanoparticles, his work offers insights into cellular senescence, aging and disease, aiming to develop anti-aging and senotherapeutic strategies.
Uri Alon
Professor and Systems Biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Rozalyn Anderson
Professor of Medicine
Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology
School of Medicine and Public Health
University of Wisconsin Madison, USA
Albert-László Barabási
Northeastern University
Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science,
Distinguished University Professor,
Director, Center for Complex Network Research;
Harvard University
Lecturer in Medicine, Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital;
Central European University
Visiting Professor, Center for Network Science, USA
Albert-László Barabási is the Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science and a Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University, where he directs the Center for Complex Network Research. He holds appointments in the Departments of Physics and Computer Science at Northeastern University as well as in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women Hospital, and he is a visiting professor at the Department of Network and Data Science at Central European University in Budapest. A Hungarian born native of Transylvania, Romania, he received his Master’s in Theoretical Physics at the Eotvos University in Budapest, Hungary and was awarded a Ph.D. three years later at Boston University. Barabási is the author several general audience books, like “The Formula: The Science of Success (2018)” "Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do" (2010), "Linked: The New Science of Networks" (2002) and of the textbooks Network Science (2020) and the monograph Science of Science (coathored with Dashun Wang).

Barabasi's work lead to the discovery of scale-free networks in 1999 and proposed the Barabási-Albert model to explain their widespread emergence in natural, technological and social systems, from the cellular telephone to the WWW or online communities.

Barabási is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the recipient of the 2023 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of APS. He was awarded the FEBS Anniversary Prize for Systems Biology in 2005 and the John von Neumann Medal by the John von Neumann Computer Society from Hungary, for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology in 2006. He has been elected into the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2004) and the Academia Europaea (2007). He received the C&C Prize from the NEC C&C Foundation in 2008. In 2009 the US National Academies of Sciences awarded him the 2009 Cozzarelli Prize. In 2011 Barabási was awarded the Lagrange Prize-CRT Foundation for his contributions to complex systems, awarded Doctor Honoris Causa from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, became an elected Fellow in AAAS (Physics), and is a 2013 Fellow of the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences.
Michael Baran
PhD, MBA, Partner, Pfizer Ventures, Executive Director, External Science & Innovation, Worldwide R&D, Pfizer, Inc., USA
Mike has responsibility for growing venture investment transactions and managing equity investments aligned with future directions of Pfizer. He currently has responsibility for Pfizer’s investments in Anjarium Biosciences, Autobahn Therapeutics, Capstan Therapeutics, ImCheck Therapeutics, ImmunOs Therapeutics, Interius Biotherapeutics, Mediar Therapeutics, Incendia Therapeutics, TRex Bio, and VitaDAO.

From 2017-2018 Mike served as Senior Director of Portfolio Strategy, critically assessing the R&D portfolio from a volume, value, quality, risk and productivity perspective with the ultimate objective of maximizing R&D productivity and value generation. From 2011-2017 Mike was Senior Director, Scientific Affairs for the R&D President’s Office, enabling and communicating the R&D strategic agenda as well as leading colleague development capabilities. Mike joined Pfizer in 2008 in the market access space providing strategic and analytical support around marketing and managed care contracting with commercial and government payers. 

Previously, Mike worked within the NIH Protein Structure Initiative’s Northeast Structural Genomics Consortium coordinating protein structure production efforts, including bioinformatics, protein expression/purification and 3D structure determination. Mike is also a co-founder of Nexomics Biosciences, a NJ-based biotechnology company focused on providing gene-2-structure services as well as early-stage drug target validation. 

Mike earned his PhD from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School/Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in biochemistry. He holds a MBA from Rutgers Business School and received his BS in Biochemistry/Information Technology from Syracuse University.
Nir Barzilai
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, USA
Dr. Nir Barzilai is the founding director of the Institute for Aging Research, the Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging and the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Human Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University (Einstein). He also directs the Longevity Genes Project, a genetics study of over 600 families of centenarians and their children. The participants are all Ashkenazi Jews, a group selected for their genetic homogeneity, which makes it easier to identify significant genetic variations. Dr. Barzilai found that many of the centenarians had very high levels of HDL, or the "good cholesterol." Dr. Barzilai is also co-founder of CohBar, Inc., a biotechnology company developing mitochondria based therapeutics to treat diseases associated with aging.

Dr. Barzilai discovered several "longevity genes" in humans that were validated by others. These include variants in genes involved in cholesterol metabolism (CETP and APOC3), metabolism (ADIPOQ and TSHR) and growth (IGF1R). These genes appear to protect centenarians against major age-related diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes and dementia.
Michael Basson
Nature Medicine, USA
As a graduate student in Jasper Rine's laboratory at University of California at Berkeley, Michael studied the sterol biosynthetic pathway and its rate-limiting enzyme HMG-CoA reductase in baker's yeast. His postdoctoral work was on developmental genetics and microRNAs with Robert Horvitz at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then worked in the biotech industry, first on the use of model organisms for drug discovery and then on tumor angiogenesis. Michael currently handles research manuscripts in the fields of cardiovascular diseases, precision medicine & big data, and bioengineering & biotechnology. He joined Nature Medicine in 2003 and is based in the New York office.

Isabel Beerman, PhD

Stadtman Investigator

National Institute on Aging, USA

Andreas Beyer
SyBACol
CECAD
CMMC
Institute for Genetics,
Faculty of Medicine,
University of Cologne, Germany
Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte
Altos Labs, USA
Dr. Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, previously the Roger Guillemin Chair and Professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory at Salk Institute for Biological Studies, is currently Director of Altos Labs Institute of Science in San Diego. During life’s early stages cells display high levels of plasticity, regeneration and resilience against stress, disfunction and injury, which are key features of human health. Dr. Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, has contributed towards understanding the molecular basis underlying embryogenesis and early postnatal life, as well as gained insights into how to program and rejuvenate adult and diseased cells. He is developing technologies to program cells to states similar to those observed in the early, healthy stages of life, with the objective of developing universal health therapeutics to overcome human.
Evelyne Bischof
Chief physician associate of internal medicine and oncology at University Hospital Renji of Jiaotong University, Shanghai
Emergency medicine physician at the Shanghai East International Medical Center
Longevity physician at Human Longevity Inc.
Healthy Longevity Medicine Society, Vice-president
Longevity Science Foundation, Head of the Visionary Board
Specialist in Internal Medicine, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital health, with extensive experience in scientific research and clinical practice at the following well known and highly reputable institutions. Research focus is oncology and longevity medicine, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital health, precision medicine, biogerontology, and geronto-oncology. EB published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, is a frequent speaker at scientific and medical conferences in Asia and Europe. Long term member of various medical societies, e.g. European Federation of Internal Medicine, World Academy of Medical Sciences, Swiss Society of Internal Medicine etc.

EB spent a decade practicing medicine, lecturing at medical schools and performing clinical and translational research in New York, Shanghai and Basel, with extensive experience in scientific research and clinical practice at the following well-known and highly reputable institutions: University Hospital of Basel, Fudan Cancer Institute and Hospital; Zhongshan Hospital, Renji Hospital and Shanghai East Hospital. EB sits on several scientific and advisory boards of biotech and longevity hubs. Currently also affiliated with the Centre of Healthy Aging, Universität Zürich, and prev. senior attending physician of internal medicine at the University Hospital Basel.

Swiss board certified as internal medicine specialist (FMH), trained in Europe, USA and China (Harvard Medical School affiliated hospitals (Mass General Hospital, Beth Israel MD, Dana Farber Institute) and Columbia University NYC; Tongji University hospitals, Shanghai and University Hospitals of Zurich and Basel (Switzerland).
Gil Blander
Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at InsideTracker, USA
Dr. Gil Blander is internationally recognized for his research in the basic biology of aging and translating research discoveries into new ways of detecting and preventing age-related conditions. He leads a team of biology, nutrition & exercise physiology experts, and data scientists at InsideTracker, and has been featured in CNN Money, The New York Times, Forbes, Financial Times, The Boston Globe to name a few.
Dr. Gil Blander received a Ph.D. in biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science and completed his Post Doctoral fellowship at MIT, before going on to found InsideTracker. InsideTracker was founded in 2009 by top scientists from acclaimed universities in the fields of aging, genetics, and biology, InsideTracker is a truly personalized nutrition and performance system. Our mission is to help people add years to their lives and life to their years by optimizing their bodies from the inside out. By analyzing your body's data, we can give you a crystal clear picture of what's going on inside you along with a science-backed action plan for improving your health and becoming your best self.
Ed Boyden
MIT, USA
Rafael de Cabo
Chief of the Translational Gerontology Branch at the National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, USA
Dr. de Cabo earned his Ph.D. in 2000 from the Department of Foods and Nutrition at Purdue University. He received a postdoctoral position in the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2004, he was appointed as a tenure track investigator in the Laboratory of Experimental Gerontology. He is now a senior investigator and Chief of the Translational Gerontology Branch at NIA. His research has focused on the effects of nutritional interventions on basic mechanisms of aging and age-related diseases, the effects of caloric restriction on aging, and pharmacological interventions for healthy aging. Ultimately his research aims to identify interventions that will improve healthspan and lifespan with translational potential to benefit human aging.
Matt Dawson
Co-Founder of Wild Health,
CEO of TruDiagnostic, USA
Dr. Matt Dawson is the CEO and Co-Founder of Wild Health, a genomics based precision medicine company. He is also CEO of TruDiagnostic, a deep science epigenetics company focused on human longevity testing.

Dr. Dawson has published dozens of research articles, authored two textbooks, and written over 100 book chapters. He has won national awards in education and innovation and given talks in over 20 countries. He has a passion for not only human performance and longevity, but also bringing cutting edge research and science to market so that individuals can actually benefit from them. As such, he has founded 6 companies in the last decade, all of which are still in operation. Three of these have been acquired. His passion for human performance started in high school when he paired it with suboptimal natural athletic abilities to earn college scholarship offers in two different sports. His passion for longevity comes from a desire to be around as long as possible for his 4 children, wife, and future great grandchildren. He lives with that current family and two dogs in the woods of Kentucky.

Vishwa Deep Dixit
Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Pathology, Comparative Medicine and of Immunobiology
Director, Yale Center for Research on Aging
Member, Yale Center for Molecular and Systems Metabolism
Yale School of Medicine, USA
Son of teachers, Deep grew up in Hisar (Northwest India). He studied Veterinary Medicine in India, did PhD Research in University of Hannover Germany and postdoc research in Morehouse School of Medicine and NIH. He currently holds Waldemar Von Zedtwitz endowed chair and is a Professor in the Departments of Pathology, Comparative Medicine and Immunobiology and is the director of Yale Center for Research on Aging at the Yale School of Medicine. Dixit lab studies Immunometabolism and aging. His team help establish NLRP3 inflammasome as a key mechanism of 'inflammaging' and immunosenescence that leads to age-related chronic diseases including metabolic dysfunction. Dixit and his collaborators have identified that switch from glycolysis to ketogenesis deactivates the inflammasome and reduces immunopathology. The ongoing work in his laboratory is aimed at understanding how adaptation to negative energy balance in a host can be harnessed to identify immunometabolic checkpoints to enhance health and lifespan.
Marсo Demaria
European Research Institute for the Biology of Ageing (ERIBA);
University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), The Netherlands
Marco Demaria is a Professor of Cellular Ageing at the Medical Faculty of the University of Groningen (RUG) and the Group leader of laboratory of Cellular Senescence and Age-related Pathologies at the European Research Institute for the Biology of Ageing (ERIBA, Groningen, Netherlands). He obtained his PhD in Molecular Medicine at the University of Torino, Italy, and trained as postdoc in the laboratory of prof. Judith Campisi at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, California USA. His research is focused towards understanding the role of cellular senescence in different physiological and pathological contexts with the goal to identify novel interventions to extend healthy longevity. His laboratory covers fundamental, translational and clinical aspects, and is funded by several intramural and extramural agencies. Since 2023, Prof. Demaria also serves as the Director of the Mechanisms of Health, Ageing and Disease (MoHAD) of the University Medical Center Groningen. Additionally, Prof. Demaria is the President of the International Cell Senescence Association and Editor in Chief of the Natural Publishing Group journal npj aging. In 2018 he co-founded a start-up company, Cleara Biotech, devoted to develop anti-senescence drugs.
Luigi Ferrucci
National Institute on Aging, USA
Dr. Luigi Ferrucci is a geriatrician and an epidemiologist who conducts research on the causal pathways leading to progressive physical and cognitive decline in older persons. He has made major contributions in the design of many epidemiological studies conducted in the U.S. and in Europe. Dr. Ferrucci received a Medical Degree and Board Certification in 1980, Board Certification in Geriatrics in 1982 and Ph.D. in Biology and Pathophysiology of Aging in 1998 at the University of Florence, Italy. Between 1985 and 2002 he was Chief of Geriatric Rehabilitation at the Department of Geriatric Medicine and Director of the Laboratory of Clinical Epidemiology at the Italian National Institute of Aging. In September 2002, he became the Chief of the Longitudinal Studies Section at NIA. From 2002 to 2014 he was the Director of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study on Aging. Dr. Ferrucci is currently the Scientific Director of NIA, since May 2011.
Mara Fornaro
Associate Director, Diseases of Aging and Regenerative Medicine, Biomedical Research at Novartis, Switzerland
Mara Fornaro is Associate Director in the department of Diseases of Aging and Regenerative Medicine (DARe), Biomedical Research at Novartis in Basel, Switzerland. The mission of DARe is to restore cell and tissue function in diseases of aging. Mara obtained her PhD in Pharmacology at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, Italy. She carried-out her postdoctoral research on the role of integrins in prostate cancer biology in the Pathology department at Yale University in New Haven CT, USA where she continued to work as Associate Research Scientist until end of 2004. She joined Novartis in 2005 as Senior Investigator in the Musculoskeletal Diseases department at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research where she contributed to the discovery of targets and drug candidates for the treatment of neuromuscular and musculoskeletal diseases to restore mobility and independence in old age.
Kristen Fortney
BioAge Labs, Inc., USA
Kristen Fortney is the co-founder and CEO of BioAge, a clinical-stage biotechnology
company developing a pipeline of treatments to extend healthy lifespan by targeting the molecular causes of aging. The company uses its discovery platform, which combines quantitative analysis of proprietary longitudinal human samples with detailed health records tracking individuals over the lifespan, to map out the key molecular pathways that impact healthy human aging. By targeting these pathways with a large and mechanistically diverse portfolio of drugs, BioAge will unlock opportunities to treat or even prevent diseases of aging in entirely new ways.
Kristen's scientific background is in aging biology and bioinformatics. She received her PhD in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto, followed by postdoctoral training at Stanford University where she was a fellow of the Ellison Medical Foundation / American Federation for Aging Research.
David Furman, PhD
Associate Professor and Bioinformatics Core Director, Buck Institute for Research on Aging
Director, Stanford 1000 Immunomes Project, Stanford School of Medicine, USA
Dr. David Furman is the Director of the Stanford 1000 Immunomes Project, and Associate Professor and Director of the Bioinformatics Core at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. His work involves the use of Machine Learning tools to better define the role of the immune system in aging. Dr. Furman has published over forty scientific articles in top-tier journals such as Cell, Nature Medicine, PNAS, The Lancet, and others.
Jennifer Garrison
Co-Founder and Director of the Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity & Equality (GCRLE)
Assistant Professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.
Jennifer Garrison, PhD, is Co-Founder and Director of the Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity & Equality (GCRLE) and an Assistant Professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. She also holds appointments in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California (USC). She is a passionate advocate for women's health and is pioneering a new movement to advance science focused on female reproductive aging. Her lab studies the role of inter-tissue communication in systemic aging, and how changes in the complex interactions between the ovary and brain during middle-age lead to the onset of reproductive decline in females.She has played an active role in the aging field, as a member of the Board of Directors for the American Aging Association (AGE), a reviewer for the American Federation of Aging Research (AFAR), and as Associate Director of the Buck-USC Biology of Aging PhD program. Dr. Garrison was named an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Neuroscience Research Fellow and an Allen Institute for Brain Science Next Generation Leader and is the recipient of a Glenn Medical Foundation Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging, and a Junior Faculty Award from the American Federation of Aging Research.
David Glass
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., USA
Vera Gorbunova
University of Rochester, Departments of Biology and Medicine, USA
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 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 response that drives 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 of 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.
Myriam Gorospe
Laboratory of Genetics and Genomics,
National Institute on Aging,
National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA
Myriam Gorospe studied Biology in Madrid (Spain) and earned her Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology from the State University of New York at Albany, USA. After post-doctoral training at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), she became a Principal Investigator in NIA/NIH in 1998. In the Laboratory of Genetics and Genomics (NIA/NIH), which she directs since 2014, she studies post-transcriptional gene regulation in mammalian models of cellular stress, senescence, and aging. Her program has a long-standing focus on RNA-binding proteins and noncoding RNAs that influence gene expression programs in aging physiology and pathology.
Vadim Gladyshev
Harvard Medical School, USA
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 Associate 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 400 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.
Aubrey de Grey
President and CSO at LEV Foundation
Co-founder at SENS Research Foundation and Viento
Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist based in Mountain View, California, USA, and is the Chief Science Officer of SENS Research Foundation, a California-based 501(c)(3) biomedical research charity that performs and funds laboratory research dedicated to combating the aging process. In addition, he is Editor-in-Chief of Rejuvenation Research, the world's highest-impact peer-reviewed journal focused on intervention in aging. He received his BA in computer science and Ph.D. in biology from the University of Cambridge. His research interests encompass the characterisation of all the types of self-inflicted cellular and molecular damage that constitute mammalian aging and the design of interventions to repair and/or obviate that damage. Dr. de Grey is a Fellow of both the Gerontological Society of America and the American Aging Association, and sits on the editorial and scientific advisory boards of numerous journals and organisations. He is a highly sought-after speaker who gives 40-50 invited talks per year at scientific conferences, universities, companies in areas ranging from pharma to life insurance, and to the public.
Sara Hägg
Associate Professor, Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
I lead a research group that focuses on molecular epidemiological studies of aging, with a special interest in human biological aging mechanisms and the association with age-related traits such as frailty and dementia. Currently, I lead several projects on drug repurposing for biological aging and related diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Covid-19 and Cancer, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Cancer Society.
Fraser Hall
President, Head of Intercontinental Region, Biogen, USA
Fraser Hall is President, Head of Intercontinental Region, which includes Latin America, Australia, Asia, Japan, the Middle East and Africa, as well as Turkey and Russia/CIS.

Prior to joining Biogen in July 2020 as Vice President for Latin America, Mr. Hall was with AstraZeneca for 5 years. There, he initially served as Vice President in the global organization, where he led the strategy and launch preparation for a new stroke treatment, and then as Country President for Brazil, where he led the COVID trial program and negotiations on vaccine supply with the Brazilian government.

Before AstraZeneca, Mr. Hall worked for Novartis for 13 years. This experience covered leadership and general management roles at country, region and global levels, with extensive work in Asia and developing markets.

Mr. Hall holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Aston University and has completed finance and organizational leadership courses at Harvard University and MIT.
Lou Hawthorne
Founder & CEO, NaNotics LLC
Jens Juul Holst
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Jamie Justice,
XPRIZE, USA
Dr. Jamie Justice, PhD, is Executive Director of XPRIZE Healthspan Prize and EVP of Health Domain at XPRIZE Foundation, and an Adjunct Professor in Internal Medicine Section on Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, and Sticht Center on Healthy Aging and Alzheimer's Prevention at Wake Forest University School of Medicine (WFUSM). Jamie completed graduate and postdoc training at University of Colorado Boulder and WFUSM. At WFUSM Jamie was director the Biogerontology Lab, and co-leader the Integrative Biology Core (IBC) of the WF Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center (OAIC), and an MPI of the National Institute of Aging-supported Geroscience Education. Jamie was the recipient of the Jarrahi Research Scholars Fund in Geroscience Innovation, the 2022 Vincent Cristofalo Rising Star in Aging Research, and the 2022 NIA Nathan W Shock Awardee.

Jamie is dedicated to geroscience which that advances the hypothesis that by targeting the basic biology of aging the incidence of multiple age-related diseases can be delayed or prevented. Her training background allowed her lead translational research to test the geroscience hypothesis in humans. This included: 1) serving as Co-I on large multicenter prospective cohort studies like the Study of Muscle Mobility and Aging (SOMMA), and the NIH Cell Senescence (SenNet) Buck Institute Tissue Mapping Center for skeletal muscle; 2) leading proof-of-concept senolytics trials; and 3) designing trials of testing therapeutics that target biological age in older adults. In her new role as Executive Director of the $101M XPRIZE Healthspan she operates a $101 million global competition to drive teams to develop innovative solutions that make healthy human aging possible, for everyone.
Steve Horvath
Altos Labs, USA
Dr. Horvath is a biogerontologist, whose research lies at the intersection of several fields including epigenetic biomarkers of aging, preclinical and clinical studies, genomics, epidemiology, and comparative biology. Dr Horvath is a principal investigator at Altos Labs. He and his UCLA colleagues published the first epigenetic clock for saliva in 2011. In 2013, he published the first pan-tissue clock, also known as the Horvath clock. Recently, he presented a universal clock that applies to all mammals. The recipient of several awards, he has been on Clarivate’s annual list of the world’s most influential scientific researchers every year since 2018.
Pankaj Kapahi
Buck institute, USA
Dr. Pankaj Kapahi, a distinguished scientist, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Manchester and a BSc with first-class honors from St. Georges Hospital Medical School, University of London. He is currently a Professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Kapahi's groundbreaking research in aging has garnered prestigious awards, including the Glenn AFAR Award and the Gerontological Society of America's Nathan Shock New Investigator Award. He has published over 85 peer-reviewed articles, contributing significantly to the understanding of lifespan extension and disease modeling.
Brian Kennedy
National University of Singapore, Singapore
Dr. Brian Kennedy is internationally recognized for his research in the basic biology of aging and as a visionary committed to translating research discoveries into new ways of detecting, delaying, preventing and treating human aging and associated diseases. He is a Distinguished Professor in Biochemistry and Physiology at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at National University Singapore and serves as Director of (1) the Centre for Healthy Longevity at the National University Health System, (2) the Healthy Longevity Translational Research Programme, and (3) the Asian Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equality. Collectively, NUS aging research seeks to demonstrate that longevity interventions can be successfully employed in humans to extend healthspan, the disease-free and highly functional period of life.

From 2010 to 2016, Dr. Kennedy was the President and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and he maintained a professorship there through 2020. Dr. Kennedy has an adjunct appointments at the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington, where he was a faculty member from 2001 to 2010. In addition, Dr. Kennedy is also actively involved with a number of Biotechnology companies. In addition, Dr. Kennedy serves as a Co-Editor-In-Chief at Aging Cell. Finally, Dr. Kennedy has a track record of interaction in China, where he was a Visiting Professor at the Aging Research Institute at Guangdong Medical College from 2009 to 2014. His Ph.D. was performed in the laboratory of Leonard Guarente at M.I.T., where he published the first paper linking Sirtuins to aging.
Morten Scheibye-Knudsen
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Morten Scheibye-Knudsen is Associate Professor and group leader at the Center for Healthy Aging, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Besides his research activity, he has been committed to educational programs and his online companies Mitodb.com and Forsøgsperson.dk. The latter has grown to become the largest single provider of study participants in Denmark. Morten Scheibye-Knudsen earned his MD in 2007 and his PhD in 2016 from the University of Copenhagen. After graduation, he worked as physician at Slagelse Hospital and at Nuuk Medical Clinic in Greenland. In 2008, he became a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institute on Aging at the NIH in Baltimore, Maryland. His work focused on the cross-talk between DNA repair and mitochondrial function in aging and has been honored by a number of competitive awards. In 2015 he was recruited to start his own research group at the University of Copenhagen, where his research group aims to understand the cellular and organismal consequences of DNA damage in the context of aging. With the ultimate goal to modulate and perhaps treat aging and age-related diseases, allowing everyone to live healthier and longer lives.
Omer Karin
Lecturer in Biomathematics, Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, UK
Omer Karin completed a BSc in Computer Science and received an MSc and PhD from the Weizmann Institute. He was subsequently a JSMF postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge between 2021-2022. In 2022 he joined the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College London, where he is now a Lecturer in Biomathematics. Omer is interested in developing mathematical and computational approaches for systems biology and systems medicine, with a specific interest in understanding the mechanisms that control cell dynamics.
Mette Kierkgaard
Minister for Senior Citizens, Denmark
James L. Kirkland
Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging, USA
The major research focus of James L. Kirkland, M.D., Ph.D., is the impact of cellular aging (senescence) on age-related dysfunction and chronic diseases, especially developing methods for removing these cells and alleviating their effects. Senescent cells accumulate with aging and in such diseases as dementias, atherosclerosis, cancers, diabetes and arthritis.
The goal of Dr. Kirkland's current work is to develop methods to remove these cells to delay, prevent, alleviate or partially reverse age-related chronic diseases as a group and extend health span, the period of life free of disability, pain, dependence and chronic disease.
Sharon Rosenzweig-Lipson
Chief Scientific Officer, Life Biosciences, USA
Dr. Rosenzweig-Lipson holds significant expertise in screening strategies, in vivo models, translation, and clinical development strategy with more than three decades of experience developing compounds for psychiatric and neurologic indications in the pharmaceutical industry and in biotech. Her career in big pharma includes American Cyanamid, American Home Products, Wyeth, and Pfizer. Most recently, as head of R&D, Dr. Rosenzweig-Lipson led the clinical development of AgeneBio’s lead asset through Phase 2B trials as well as the company’s preclinical development programs. Dr. Rosenzweig-Lipson earned her BA in the biological basis of behavior from the University of Pennsylvania and her PhD in behavioral neuroscience from Harvard University.
Johan Luthman
Executive Vice President
Research & Development, Lundbeck, Denmark
Johan Luthman is head of R&D, including medical affairs, at Lundbeck A/S. He has transformed Lundbeck’s R&D and its pipeline, with a shift towards specialist and rare indications in neurology and psychiatry as well as changed the company’s biological research areas. Before Lundbeck, Johan led neurology development Eisai. Johan has also worked at Merck Inc, leading early neuroscience development, as CEO at GeNeuro and was leading Neurology, Immunology & Inflammation Research at MerckSerono. Johan began his pharmaceutical career at Astra/AstraZeneca in discovery, and early development.
Johan studied medicine/dentistry and obtained a Ph.D, later becoming associate professor at the Karolinska Institute.
Andrea B. Maier
Oon Chiew Seng Professor in Medicine and Functional Ageing, National University of Singapore, Professor of Gerontology Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Professor Maier, a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP), graduated in Medicine (MD) 2003 from the University of Lübeck (Germany), was registered 2009 in The Netherlands as Specialist in Internal Medicine-Geriatrics and was appointed Full Professor of Gerontology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in 2013. From 2016 to early 2021 Professor Maier has served as Divisional Director of Medicine and Community Care at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia, and as Professor of Medicine and Aged Care at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She continues her career at the National University of Singapore as Co-Director of the Centre for Healthy Longevity. Professor Maier's research focuses on unraveling the mechanisms of ageing and age-related diseases. During the last 10 years she has conducted multiple international observational studies and intervention trials and has published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles, achieving an H index of 54, spearheading the significant contributions of her highly acclaimed innovative, global, multidisciplinary @Age research group. She is a frequent guest on radio and television programs to disseminate aging research and an invited member of several international academic and health policy committees. She currently is the President of The Australian and New Zealand Society for Sarcopenia and Frailty Research.
João Pedro de Magalhães
Genomics of Ageing and Rejuvenation Lab,
Institute of Inflammation and Ageing, University of Birmingham, UK
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 ageing 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. Prof de Magalhaes founded Oxford Cryotechnology (https://oxfordcryotech.com/), a company employing computational and machine learning-guided design to develop improved cryopreservation methods with broad applications.
Lisa Melton
Senior News Editor, Nature Biotechnology
Lisa Melton is Senior News Editor at Nature Biotechnology. Lisa has a PhD in Immunology, and a degree in Biochemistry from The University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She moved to the UK to work as a postdoc at the National Institutes of Medical Research in London (now the Crick Institute) and later switched to science journalism at the Novartis Foundation. Lisa has written for the Economist, the New Scientist, Scientific American, the Observer and Times, and for the last 15 years, has reported and edited biotech news with a translational bent for Nature Biotechnology and Nature.
Alexey Moskalev
School of Systems Biology, George Mason University (GMU), Fairfax, VA, USA
Prof. Alexey Moskalev is a Corresponding member of Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Biology, the Head of the Laboratory of Geroprotective and Radioprotective Technologies in the Institute of Biology of Komi Scientific Centre of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Head of the Department of Ecology of the Syktyvkar State University named after Pitirim Sorokin, the Head of the Laboratory of Genetics of Aging and Longevity in the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology
Maiken Nedergaard
M.D., D.M.Sc., University of Copenhagen, Denmark
David Nutt
Imperial College, UK
Linda Partridge
UCL, England
Linda Partridge works on the biology of ageing. Her research is directed to understanding the mechanisms by which healthy lifespan can be extended in laboratory model organisms and humans. Her work has focussed in particular on the role of nutrient-sensing pathways and diet, and her primary interest is in geroprotective drugs. She is the recipient of numerous awards, was honoured with a DBE for Services to Science in 2009 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society. She is the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing and the Biological Secretary of the Royal Society.
Thomas Rando
Stanford, USA
Thomas A. Rando is an American neurologist. Rando is best known for his research on basic mechanisms of stem cell biology and the biology of aging, as well as for contributions to the study of the muscular dystrophies and the emerging field of regenerative rehabilitation. He is a Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he is founding director of the Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging. Rando is also Chief of Neurology at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System.
Chris Reading, PhD
Senior Vice President
Alzheimer's Disease Program, BioVie, USA
Chris Reading received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from UC Berkeley, performed post-doctoral studies in cancer biology at UC Irvine, and joined MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Texas, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Houston for 13 years, where he became Associate Professor of Medicine in the Department of Developmental Therapeutics with a joint appointment in the Department of Tumor Biology. He then accepted a position at Systemix / Novartis in Palo Alto, where he became Vice President of Product and Process Development. From there, he moved to San Diego where he has spent over 15 years on the NE3107 platform development at Harbor Therapeutics. He has over 35 years of research and drug development experience, and over 130 peer-reviewed scientific publication, and has authored numerous patents in the areas of monoclonal antibodies, cell separation technologies, stem cell transplantation, and sterol drug development.
Michael Ringel
Managing Director and Senior Partner at BCG
Michael Ringel is a Managing Director and Senior Partner at BCG, and BCG's Global Topic Leader for Growth and Innovation. He is a frequent author and speaker on R&D and innovation topics. His TED talk on innovation can be viewed at TED.com. He is also Strategic Advisor to Life Biosciences, a company targeting aging biology to address multiple diseases.

Prior to BCG, Michael worked in academia, pursuing research in theoretical population dynamics and conducting field experiments in the Amazon basin near Manaus, Brazil. Michael holds a B.A. summa cum laude in biology from Princeton, a Ph.D. in biology from Imperial College, and a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School. He Chairs the Board of the ATOM Consortium, a public-private partnership with a mission of transforming drug development using advanced analytics.
Andrew Rutenberg
AC Fales Professor of Theoretical Physics, Dalhousie University, Canada
Dr. Andrew Rutenberg (PhD) is the AC Fales Professor of Theoretical Physics in the Department of Physics and Atmospheric Sciences at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. As a biological physicist, he has published over 80 articles and has received over $1M in operating funding from NSERC and other sources. He has made significant contributions to our understanding of complex aging systems, including developing network models of multidimensional aging dynamics and expanding our understanding of the frailty index. His research program uses a mixture of complex networks, machine learning (ML), information theory, stochastic-simulation algorithms (SSA), and other tools to gain insight into the dynamical processes that govern organismal aging and mortality.
Manuel Serrano
Principal Investigator
Cambridge Institute of Science
Altos Labs
Cambridge, UK
Dr. Manuel Serrano did his PhD under the supervision of Margarita Salas (CBM-CSIC, Madrid) and a postdoctoral stay in David Beach's lab (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, USA) from 1992 to 1996. During this time, he made one of his most important contributions, namely the discovery of the tumour suppressor p16. Dr. Serrano established his own research group in 1997, first at the National Center of Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC, Madrid) and from 2003 to May 2017 at the CNIO.

The main contributions of Dr. Serrano's lab during these years are related to the concept of oncogene-induced senescence and the anti-ageing activity of tumour suppressors. More recently, his group has reported on the relevance of tumour suppressors in metabolic syndrome, the existence of senescence during embryonic development, and the feasibility of embryonic reprogramming within living adult organisms (the latter was considered "Achievement of the Year 2013" in the stem cells field by Nature Medicine).

Dr. Serrano's track record has been recognised by several awards and honors: the FEBS Anniversary Prize, given by the Federation of European Societies of Biochemistry (FEBS); the National Award of Oncology, given by the Echevarne Foundation; the National Award of Biomedical Research, given by the Banc Sabadell Foundation; and the Fundación "Carmen y Severo Ochoa" Award. He is member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the Royal National Academy of Medicine of Spain, and the European Academy of Cancer Sciences, as well as editorial board member of several international scientific journals.
Nicholas Schork
Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), a part of the City of Hope National Medical Center, USA
Dr. Nicholas Schork is Deputy Director and Distinguished Professor of Quantitative Medicine at The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), a part of the City of Hope (COH) National Medical Center. He also holds appointments at COH, UCSD, Scripps Research, and the Providence St. Johns Health Center. His interests are in quantitative aspects of human biomedical research, particularly integrated approaches to complex biological and medical problems, including the design and analysis of precision-medicine era clinical trials. He has published 550+ scientific articles and book chapters, mentored 75+ trainees, has 12 patents on computational methods in biomedicine, sits on many different pharma and government advisory boards, and has founded or helped establish 10 companies. He is currently the Principal Investigator for the NIA-sponsored Longevity Consortium as well as the Integrated Longevity OMICS initiative. Dr. Schork is also an investigator for the NIA-funded Precision Aging Network (PAN) consortium. Dr. Schork received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Björn Schumacher
Director, Institute for Genome Stability in Aging and Disease
University of Cologne
Since 2013, Björn Schumacher is full professor and director of the Institute for Genome Stability in Aging and Diseases (IGSAD) at the CECAD Research Centre of the University of Cologne. He received his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich and conducted his postdoctoral research as EMBO and Marie Curie fellow at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. Professor Schumacher is President of the German Society for DNA Repair (DGDR), co-Director of the Minerva Center of the Biological Mechanisms of Healthy Aging at Bar-Ilan University (IL), and between 2014 and 2020 served as President of the German Society for Aging Research (DGfA). Since 2023, Schumacher is speaker of the DFG Research Unit FOR 5504 on “Physiological causes and consequences of genome instability”. He was awarded with the Eva Luise Köhler Research Prize, the Innovation Prize of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the DFG Reinhart Koselleck and European Research Council (ERC) grants, coordinated the FP7 Marie Curie initial training network on chronic DNA damage in aging (CodeAge) and served on several editorial boards. His research interest focuses on the molecular mechanisms through which DNA damage contributes to cancer development and aging-associated diseases. Employing the C. elegans system and mammalian disease models, his group uncovered cell-autonomous and systemic responses through which the organism adapts to accumulating DNA damage with aging. Through the understanding of the basic mechanisms of genome instability-driven aging, Schumacher aims to contribute to the development of future strategies to prevent aging-associated diseases.
Lingyan Shi
University of California, San Diego, USA
Professor Lingyan Shi is currently an Assistant Professor in the Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering at UC San Diego. Her research focuses on developing high-resolution, high-speed metabolic nanoscopy for studying aging and diseases. She discovered the "Golden Window" for deep tissue imaging and developed metabolic imaging platforms including "DO-SRS" and "STRIDE". Shi group at UC San Diego transformed SRS into a super-resolution multiplex nanoscopy using A-PoD and PRM algorithms, uncovering lipid metabolic dynamics in various organ tissues during aging processes. Dr. Shi holds 8 awarded patents. She received the Blavatnik Regional Award for Young Scientist in 2018, the Hellman Fellowship Award in 2021-2022, the "Rising Star Award" from Nature Light Science & Applications in 2021, the "Advancing Bioimaging Scialog Fellow" by RCSA and CZI, the "David L. William Lecture & Scholarship" Award from the Kern Lipid Conference, and the "Sloan Research Fellow" Award in Chemistry in 2023, and the 2024 rising star award by BMES-Cell and Molecular Bioengineering (CMBE) society.
David A. Sinclair
Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School
David A. Sinclair, Ph.D., A.O. is a Professor in the Department of Genetics, Blavatnik Insitute, and co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School. He is best known for his work on understanding why we age and how to slow its effects. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, in 1995 and did his postdoctoral research at M.I.T. with Dr. Leonard Guarente where he co discovered a cause of aging for yeast as well as the role of Sir2 in epigenetic changes driven by genome instability and aging. In 1999 he moved to Harvard Medical School and has primarily focused on understanding why we age and the role of protective enzymes called the sirtuins, which respond to changing NAD+ levels, exercise, and caloric restriction (CR). The Sinclair lab was the first to identify a role for NAD biosynthesis in the regulation of lifespan and first showed that sirtuins are involved in CR's benefits in mammals and identified the first small molecules that activate SIRT1 (STACs). His lab is alos working on epigenetic changes as a driver of aging and the use of reprogramming factors to reset the age of cells and tissues. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Lifespan (2019), has published over 200 scientific papers, is a co-inventor on over 50 patents, and has co-founded biotechnology companies in the areas of aging, vaccines, diabetes, infectious diseases, immunity and cancer. He serves as co-chief editor of the scientific journal Aging and has received 35 honors including the Australian Medical Research Medal, the Irving Wright Award, the NIH Director's Pioneer award, TIME magazine's list of the "100 most influential people in the world" and the "Top 50 people in Healthcare". In 2018, he became an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO).
Nicole Sirotin, MD
Department Chair, Preventive Medicine, Medical Subspecialties Institute, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, UAE
Dr. Nicole Sirotin, MD, is Chair of Preventive Medicine in the Medical Subspecialties Institute and leads the Executive Health Program at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi.  
Dr. Sirotin is among the first medical professionals globally to be certified as Diplomates of the ABLM/American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) and the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine. Lifestyle Medicine is the use of evidence-based lifestyle therapeutic approaches, such as, a predominantly whole food, plant-based diet, physical activity, adequate sleep, stress management, tobacco cessation and other non-drug modalities to prevent, treat and reverse chronic disease. 
Prior to joining Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, Dr. Sirotin was Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell
Petr Sramek
HealthyLongevity.clinic, USA
Petr is a founder of Longevitytech.fund, CEO of HealthyLongevity.clinic and HealthyLongevity.cafe, former Entrepreneur in Residence at Singularity University, co-founder of the LongevityForum.EU, board member at Animal Biosciences (US), AgeCurve (UK), Mitrix (USA) and interim CEO of various companies under Longevity.builders.
Petr has been a serial entrepreneur for more than 33 years who believes that science and technology can help humanity reach a new, better level of being. Petr's main focus is on the health, AI and education sectors. Petr is building science, funding, and business infrastructure to support faster adoption of health-span improving technologies. Petr is also engaged in finding solutions to major problems using brain-inspired AI and the latest advances in counterfactual learning, causal inference, and emergence at Whytics.
Petr helps innovative teams in Longevity technology and Artificial Intelligence grow into confident companies with global ambitions. He provides advice on fundraising, strategy, and product management. He advises companies as a mentor at Foresight Institute and Longevity Biotech.
Prof. Tzipora Strauss
MD, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel
Prof. Tzipi Strauss specialized in Pediatrics at the Sheba Medical Center. During her internship she spent two years in the Netherlands at the Leiden University Medical Center LUMC and conducted a research in the Department of Premature Infants. Later she specialized in neonatology and premature neonatal medicine at Sheba.

In 2010 she was appointed Deputy Director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Children's Hospital and in 2012 was appointed Director of the Neonatology Department and NICU. She later received her MSc in Health care management from Harvard University.

Her main areas of research are hemostasis and coagulation in preterm infants

Yousin Suh
Columbia University, USA
Yousin Suh, Ph.D., is the Charles and Marie Robertson of Reproductive Sciences in Obstetrics and Gynecology, Professor of Genetics and Development, and Director of Reproductive Aging in Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. She investigates the (epi)genetic component that underlies the interface of intrinsic aging and disease. The approach she follows is based on the identification of (epi)genome sequence variants associated with age-related disease risk or its opposite, i.e., an unusual resistance to such disease. For this purpose her target populations are either cohorts of middle-aged individuals followed longitudinally for signs of all major age-related diseases, or cohorts of extremely long-lived individuals who managed to ward off such diseases. To tackle the key problem of identifying the functional impact of any observed association, she applies specific functional tests, including in silico modeling, cell culture assays and mouse models. Discoveries thus far made include novel, rare alleles associated with extreme longevity, sirtuin variants that confer risk for heart disease, functional non-coding variants in the gene desert Chr. 9p21 locus underlying multiple age-related diseases, longevity-associated miRNAs, and epigenetic signatures of cellular senescence. Her contributions in the field have been recognized by the Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging. She has organized numerous international symposiums on functional genomics of aging, is on the Editorial Boards of numerous Journals including PLoS Genetics and Aging Cell as an Associate Editor, and participates in advisory committee members for several research institutions and companies.
Anu Suomalainen
Academy Professor of Clinical Molecular Medicine in the University of Helsinki and Chief Physician in the University Helsinki Hospital
Dr. Suomalainen received her MD PhD degree from University of Helsinki and has worked as a visiting scientist/ postdoc /visiting professor in Columbia University, Montreal Neurological Institute and UC Berkeley, respectively. She heads her translational Mitochondrial Medicine research group in University of Helsinki, Faculty of Medicine, and focuses on molecular pathophysiology, metabolic reprogramming, stress responses and mechanisms of tissue-specificity in mitochondrial and degenerative disorders and aging, and uses molecular knowledge to develop tailored treatments.
Lykke Sylow
Associate Professor and group leader of the Molecular Metabolism in Cancer & Aging Group at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Dr. Sylow received her PhD in 2014 from the University of Copenhagen and she has 15 years of experience in skeletal muscle research for which she has won multiple prizes, including the Anders Jahre Young Scientist Award for Medical Research. Her work focuses on the molecular mechanisms that control muscle mass, insulin sensitivity, and mitochondrial function. By employing cellular, murine, and human models and samples, Dr Sylow's work uncovers novel concepts and pharmacological targets to ameliorate the deterioration of muscle function in various age-related afflictions such as cancer, sarcopenia, and diabetes.
Joseph Takahashi
Professor and Chair, Department of Neuroscience
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Joseph S. Takahashi, PhD is the Loyd B. Sands Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience, Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Takahashi received a B.A. in biology from Swarthmore College in 1974 and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Oregon, Eugene, in 1981. For postdoctoral training, he was a pharmacology research associate at the National Institute of Mental Health. His research interests are the molecular mechanism of circadian clocks, neuroscience, and the genetic basis of behavior. Dr. Takahashi pioneered the use of genetics in the mouse as a tool for discovery of genes underlying neurobiology and behavior, and his discovery of the mouse and human Clock genes led to a description of a conserved circadian clock mechanism in animals. He is the author of more than 300 scientific publications and the recipient of many awards including the Honma International Prize in Biological Rhythms Research in 1986, W. Alden Spencer Award in Neuroscience from Columbia University in 2001, Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award from the Sleep Research Society in 2012, and the Gruber Neuroscience Prize in 2019. He was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000, Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2003, and Member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2014.
Mourad Topors
Chief Scientific Officer of Repair Biotechnologies, USA
Mourad Topors is the Chief Scientific Officer of Repair Biotechnologies. He has deep experience in leading and managing multi-disciplinary teams in translational medical research with a strong focus in cardiovascular disease. Formerly, Dr. Topors was Principal Investigator and Faculty at Harvard Medical School and served as Team Leader of a drug development program at Pfizer’s Center for Therapeutic Innovations. He holds a PhD in Experimental Medicine from McGill University and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Immunology at the University of Toronto.
Eric Verdin
Buck Institute, USA
Dr. Eric Verdin is the president and chief executive officer of the Buck Institute. A native of Belgium, Dr. Verdin received his Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Liege and completed additional clinical and research training at Harvard Medical School. He has held faculty positions at the University of Brussels, the National Institutes of Health, the Picower Institute for Medical Research, and the Gladstone Institutes. Dr. Verdin is also currently a professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco.

In 2016, Dr. Verdin established his lab at the Buck to study the relationship between aging and the immune system. He is an elected member of several scientific organizations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians. He has published more than 270 scientific papers and holds 18 patents.

Dr. Verdin, in conversation with Buck Senior Director of Communications Kris Rebillot, will provide suggestions and tips for how you can live your healthiest life today. Please join in the conversation by writing your questions on the card provided as you entered the auditorium. They will be collected throughout the discussion period.
Jan Vijg
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, USA
Jan Vijg is currently the Director, Center for Single-Cell Omics, School of Public Health, Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai. Prior to this he served as an Adjunct Professor, Department of New Biology, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, Daegu, Republic of Korea. His research has long been focused on genomic instability and its relationship with aging, mainly using transgenic mouse and Drosophila models harboring mutational reporter genes. Dr, Vijg is a graduate of the State University of Leiden, The Netherlands with a BA in Biology, MSc in Molecular Biology and a PhD in Molecular Biology.
Saul Villeda
Associate Director, Bakar Aging Research Institute
Associate Professor, Department of Anatomy
Endowed Professor of Biomedical Sciences
University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, USA
Dr. Saul Villeda is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Endowed Chair in Biomedical Science at the University of California San Francisco and serves as Associate Director of the Bakar Aging Research Institute. He obtained his B.S. degree from the University of California Los Angeles, his PhD degree in Neuroscience from Stanford University, and started his independent career at the University of California San Francisco as a Sandler Fellow. Dr. Villeda has made the exciting discovery that the aging process in the brain can be reversed by altering levels of circulating factors in blood. Dr. Villeda’s research is best known for the use of innovative heterochronic parabiosis and blood plasma administration approaches to investigate the influence that exposure to young blood-derived or exercise-induced circulating factors has in promoting molecular and cellular changes underlying cognitive rejuvenation. His work has garnered accolades that include a National Institutes of Health Director’s Independence Award, the W.M. Keck Foundation Medical Research Award, the Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging, and the McKnight Innovator Award in Cognitive Aging.
Prof. Dr. WANG Chunming (Michael)
Director of Smart Hospital Development Department
Renji Hospital, Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai

Professor，PHD

Director of Smart Hospital Development Department

Renji Hospital, Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai

Guest professor, School of Medicine, University of Ottawa

Member of the Medical Course Management Committee & Director of the Integrated Medical Humanities Curriculum, Ottawa-Shanghai Joint School of Medicine

Director of Medical Management Branch of China Operations Research Society

Leader of the Scientific Research Group of the Internet Hospital Branch of the First China Research Hospital Association

Member of the Medical Artificial Intelligence Management Professional Committee & Outpatient Management Professional Committee of Shanghai Hospital Association

Advisor of Medical Service Professional Committee & Big Data Center of Shanghai Modern Service Industry Federation

Young Editor of BMJ Quality & Safety Chinese Edition


Prof. Dr. Wang has held and led in multiple positions, spanning over medical service management, research and teaching management of large-scale comprehensive public hospital, with focus on research on applicable innovations in management of large scale multi-district hospital, multi- and interdisciplinary collaborations, international medical service, intelligent healthcare, digitalization and most importantly, establishment and operability of a leading internet hospital.


He receives multiple awards such as the 8th "Top Ten in Management" of Shanghai Medical Youth and the 2021 Shanghai Education Commission Meritorious Record. He leads over 20 management research projects including one under the National Natural Science Foundation of China, published more than 40 papers at home and abroad, and won 3 software copyrights.
Henrik Wegener
Rector of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Benjamin Yaden

PhD is VP-External Innovation, Diabetes, Obesity and Cardiometabolic Diseases, Eli Lilly and Company, USA

Benjamin Yaden, PhD is VP-External Innovation, Diabetes, Obesity and Cardiometabolic Diseases for Eli Lilly and Company. In his present role, he identifies, novel preclinical and clinical assets along with innovative modalities to seed the Lilly Diabetes and Complications portfolio. He works jointly with the therapeutic area R&D and Lilly’s Corporate Business Development partners to help define and execute strategy for External Innovation. In addition to his primary role, he serves on scientific advisory boards and as a board observer in the biotech space. Ben has 20 years of drug discovery experience in a multitude of disease areas (men’s health/urology, skeletal muscle wasting, diabetes, fibrosis and metabolism) including both external and internal partnering. He received his MS and PhD from Purdue University. He currently serves as an adjunct professor in the Biology Department at Purdue University (Indianapolis), where he continues to investigate and collaborate with world leaders in hepatology to delineate TGFβ superfamily mechanisms

around chronic liver/skeletal muscle injury and fibrosis.

Alex Zhavoronkov
Founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, Hong Kong
Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, is the founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine (insilico.com), a leading clinical-stage biotechnology company developing next-generation generative artificial intelligence and robotics platforms for drug discovery. Since 2014, he has invented critical technologies in the field of generative artificial intelligence and reinforcement learning (RL) for the generation of novel molecular structures with the desired properties and the generation of synthetic biological and patient data. He also pioneered the applications of transformers and other deep learning technologies for the prediction of human biological age using multiple data types, transfer learning from aging into disease, target identification, and signaling pathway modeling. Under his leadership, Insilico raised over $400 million in multiple rounds from expert biotechnology, healthcare, and financial investors, opened R&D centers in 6 countries and regions, and partnered with multiple pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and academic institutions. Since 2021, the company nominated 18 preclinical candidates, started 6 human clinical trials, and entered Phase II with an AI-discovered novel target and AI-designed novel molecule. By 2023, 10 out of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies used a part of the Pharma.AI software suite, and the IND-stage cancer program was sold in a deal with $80 million upfront as a testament to the quality and novelty of the AI-generated molecule.

Prior to founding Insilico, he worked in senior roles at ATI Technologies (GPU company acquired by AMD). Since 2012, he has published over 200 peer-reviewed research papers with over 30 papers in the field of generative adversarial networks, generative reinforcement learning, and multi-modal transformers, and 3 books, including "The Ageless Generation: How Biomedical Advances Will Transform the Global Economy" (Macmillan, 2013). He serves on the advisory or editorial boards of Trends in Molecular Medicine, Aging Research Reviews, Aging, and Frontiers in Genetics, and founded and co-chairs the Annual Aging Research and Drug Discovery (10th Annual in 2023), the world's largest event on aging research in the biotechnology industry. He is the adjunct professor of artificial intelligence at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.
Garri Zmudze
Founding board member of the Longevity Science Foundation, Co-founder and managing partner of LongeVC, Switzerland
Garri Zmudze is an expert investor and advisor for deeptech companies developing life-changing solutions across biotech, medicine, longevity and more.
Garri is committed to building a world where everyone has more healthy years with their loved ones. He co-founded the Longevity Science Foundation, a global nonprofit funding early-stage research on extending the healthy human lifespan, in 2021. Garri is also a co-founder and managing partner at LongeVC, a venture capital firm investing in visionary biotech and longevity.
Outside of his work with LongeVC, Garri is a top angel investor. He has several successful exits across biotech and tech companies, including Insilico Medicine, Deep Longevity and Basepaws.
Garri is a trusted advisor for top companies across web3 and biotech: Cointelegraph, IoTEX, PsyMed Ventures, Longenesis, Insilico Medicine and the Healthy Longevity Medicine Society