‘Understanding, Modeling Aging’
Stanford’s Brunet Will Present Next Mahoney Lecture, Apr. 7
Dr. Anne Brunet, renowned researcher for transformative discoveries in the field of aging and longevity, will present “Understanding and Modeling Aging” on Wednesday, Apr. 7 at 3 p.m. via NIH videocast. She was originally scheduled to present last year, but the 2020 Florence Mahoney Lecture on Aging was postponed due to the pandemic.
An NIH grantee, Brunet is the Michele and Timothy Barakett professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Laboratories for the Biology of Aging at Stanford University. She is interested in the molecular mechanisms of aging and longevity, with a particular emphasis on the nervous system.
Focused on understanding aging and rejuvenation, the Brunet lab uses model organisms with diverse lifespans—worms, killifish and mice. Researchers are interested in identifying pathways involved in regulating aging in response to external stimuli, including availability of nutrients.
Scientists also want to understand the mechanisms of brain aging and rejuvenation, focusing on the role of regenerative neural stem cell niches during aging. Brunet will present work on the role of the immune system in brain aging and discuss how her lab pioneered the naturally short-lived African killifish as a new model to identify principles underlying vertebrate aging.
Brunet earned her B.S. degree with honors in biology from Ecole Normale Supérieure (France) and her Ph.D. in biology from the University of Nice (France). In 1997, she moved to the United States to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and moved to Stanford in 2004. She has received numerous awards including the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, Bennett J. Cohen Award for Research in Aging and the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award.
Mahoney lectures are sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and named in honor of Florence Stephenson Mahoney (1899–2002), who devoted much of her life to successfully advocating for the creation of NIA and increased support for NIH.