We believe insights into the basic biology of aging have transformative potential to address health disparities. Our research seeks to understand how genes and environments combine to shape health across the life course, with the long term goal to identify opportunities for policy, clinical, and public health intervention to promote positive development in early life and extend health across the lifespan.
Current Projects
Supported by the US National Institute on Aging (R01AG061378) this project is developing a multi-omics database from blood, adipose, and muscle samples collected from participants in the CALERIE Randomized Controlled Trial, the first-ever randomized human trial of long-term calorie restriction in healthy, non-obese humans.
Supported by the US National Institute on Aging (R01AG066887), this project is developing whole-genome SNP genotype and blood DNA methylation databases for the Dutch Hunger Winter Families Study, a family-based cohort selected for discordant exposure to in-utero undernutrition caused by the Nazi blockade of food supplies to the Southern Netherlands at the end of World War II. The goals of the project are to evaluate potential genetic confounding of famine effects on aging-related disease and to understand the impacts of in-utero famine on biological aging.
Initially supported by the Russel Sage Foundation, this project investigates how early-life socioeconomic conditions and life-course socioeconomic mobility shape trajectories of biological aging in mid-late adulthood.
Funded by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, this project aims to understand how adverse childhood experiences and other early-life adversities impact biological aging, and to refine a measurement battery to detect these impacts in children and young and older adults.
Supported by the US National Institute on Aging (R01AG073402) MyGoals for Healthy Aging will follow-up participants in a randomized controlled trial of a successful intervention to promote employment and improve income among unemployed adults receiving Federal housing subsidies in Houston and Baltimore. The goal of the project is to test the impact of the 3y intervention on health outcomes, including DNA methylation measures of biological aging.
