Professor, Gerontology and Biological Sciences, ARCO/William F. Kieschnick Chair in the Neurobiology of Aging
University of Southern California

Brain aging mechanisms hare my career focus. My PhD thesis identified age impairments in genomic  responses to cold stress that pointed to a then new venue in gerontology: the role of the brain and pituitary in system wide aging changes. This direction diverged from molecular gerontologists who sought cell level autonomous aging processes, epitomized by the Hayflick model of cell senescence. Suffice it to say both approaches are needed. For five decades, I have used biochemical and genomic approaches to the physiology brain aging processes.  Recent work focuses on gene-environment interactions of ApoE alleles in the context of the Gero-Exposome.