Speaker Biographies
Robert William Fogel, PhD
James Goodwin, MSc, PhD, TD
Leonard Guarente, PhD
Alexandre Kalache, MSc, MD, PhD, FRCPH
Alan I. Leshner, PhD
S. Jay Olshansky, PhD
Robert N. Butler, MD
Robert N. Butler, M.D., is President and Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chair of the Alliance for Health and the Future of the International Longevity Center - USA, and professor of geriatrics at the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.
From 1975 to 1982 he was the founding director of the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health. In 1982 he founded the first department of geriatrics in a U.S. medical school.
In 1976 Butler won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Why Survive? Being Old in America. He is co-author (with Dr. Myrna I. Lewis) of the books Aging and Mental Health and Love and Sex After 60. He is presently working on a book The Longevity Revolution.
In 2003 he received the Heinz Award for the Human Condition.
Robert William Fogel, PhD
Robert William Fogel received his B.A. from Cornell University, his M.A. from Columbia University, and his Ph.D., in Economics, from Johns Hopkins University. He has held faculty positions at the University of Rochester, Cambridge University, and Harvard University. He is currently the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of American Institutions and the director of the Center for Population Economics in the Graduate School of Business, as well as a member of both the Department of Economics and the Committee on Social Thought, at the University of Chicago. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 1993, he received the Nobel Prize in Economics (with Douglass C. North). During his graduate work under Simon Kuznets, he became interested in combining the study of economics and history to understand long-term technological and institutional change. Early work focused on railroads and economic growth in American history, which was followed by analyses of the economics of American slavery (jointly with S. L. Engerman) published as Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (1974) and Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (4 vols., 1989-1992). In 2000, he published a reinterpretation of America’s current prosperity, material and spiritual, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism. The Slavery debates, 1952 1990: A retrospective (2004) provided a personal assessment of the twentieth-century debates over American slavery. Beginning in the mid-1970s he began to study the secular decline in mortality and the improvement in health and nutrition. Since the mid-1980s he has focused on the changing pattern of aging over the life cycle in the United States. The latest findings from this project were published in The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death 1700-2100: Europe, America, and the Third World (2004). His other current research includes an examination of the role of Simon Kuznets in twentieth-century economic thought and the development of the discipline of economics during the twentieth century.James Goodwin, MSc, PhD, TD
Dr Goodwin is presently the Head of Research in a large international charity, Help the Aged. He has wide experience working with government, with the research community and with the private sector. He holds honorary academic appointments at two UK Universities. He is a member of the advisory board of the journal ‘Ageing Horizons’ at Oxford University and a member of the editorial board of ‘Quality in Ageing’. He sits on numerous expert bodies, including a UN research and strategy group, a WHO Advisory Group, the UK Funder’s Forum on Ageing and on numerous research commissioning panels. He chairs the Health Forecasting Steering Committee and is a member of the Health Research Scientific Committee at the UK Met Office. He recently presented evidence to the House of Lords inquiry on research on ageing (Select Committee on Science and Technology).
Dr Goodwin graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Biology and Education from Keele University in England. After service as an infantry officer in HM Forces, he joined the UK National Guard and studied for a Master’s in Human Physiology at Loughborough University. He studied for a PhD in climatic physiology at the Postgraduate Medical School, University of Exeter. His main research area was the effects of temperature variations on the cardiovascular health of older people, an area highly relevant to the effects of climate change. He held academic posts at the University of Exeter and the University of Teesside, UK where he was Principal Lecturer in Research. He was appointed as Head of Research at the Help the Aged Foundation in 2002. Help the Aged is a major international charity employing 2000 people in the UK and operating in 35 countries, with an annual turnover of $150 million.
Dr Goodwin is married with two children, has a Rottweiler puppy and is an international pistol shot for the UK National Guard.
Leonard Guarente, PhD
Leonard Guarente formerly studied gene regulation in eukaryotes. In these early studies, his lab first purified the TATA-binding protein TBP and cloned the gene, discovered UASs, identified the first heteromeric transcription factor (HAP2/3/4/5), and provided the first evidence for coactivators. He then turned his studies to the mechanism of aging and its regulation using yeast and subsequently higher organisms. His lab identified SIR2 as the key gene regulating life span in yeast and C. elegans – an extra copy of SIR2 significantly increases the life span of both organisms. Notably, his lab first discovered the novel biochemical activity of the SIR2 gene product – NAD-dependent deacetylase. This activity suggested that SIR2 might be involved in linking diet to the regulation of aging, addressing the longstanding question of how calorie restriction (CR) might slow aging. His lab established a system of studying CR in yeast and showed that CR extended the life span in yeast mother cells by activating SIR2. This activation requires up-regulation of electron transport, which increases the NAD/NADH ratio and activates Sir2p.
More recently, his lab has made several findings regarding the mammalian ortholog of SIR2, Sirt1. This protein is also an NAD-dependent deacetylase. Importantly, it controls several physiological processes impacted by CR. First, Sirt1 renders cells stress resistant by inhibiting pro-apoptotic transcription factors p53 and forkhead. Second, Sirt1 also promotes the mobilization of fat from white adipocytes upon food limitation. It does this by inhibiting the factor PPAR, which is important promoting fat storage in white adipocytes. Dr. Guarente’s findings show that the life and health extension by CR are not passive events, but result from the activation of Sirt1, which then impacts on cellular and organismal processes to deliver the benefits.
Dr. Guarente received his B. S. from MIT and his Ph. D. at Harvard, under the supervision of Jon Beckwith. He trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard with Mark Ptashne and has been on the faculty of MIT since 1981, where he is the Novartis Professor of Biology. His book Ageless Quest (Cold Spring Harbor Press, 2003) describes the pathway of discovery of SIR2 as a key regulator of life span in response to diet.
Alexandre Kalache, MSc, MD, Phd, FRCPH
Alexandre Kalache is a medical doctor, originally from Brazil , who studied for his MSc degree (Social Medicine) and PhD degree (Cancer Epidemiology) in England.
Since 1995 he has acted as the Head of the Ageing and Life Course Programme (ALC) at the World Health Organization. ALC activities are designed to advance the state of knowledge about health care in older age and gerontology through dissemination of information, training and research efforts. ALC special focus is on the development of policies reflecting the 'WHO Active Ageing framework.'
Previously, Dr Kalache served as founder and head of the Epidemiology of Ageing Unit at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), where from 1984 to 1995, he launched a series of international short courses on the implications for Public Health of population ageing. These courses were subsequently replicated by several countries resulting in the establishment of global network of researchers under his coordination. While at the LSHTM, Dr Kalache was also responsible for setting up, in 1991, the first European MSc course on Health Promotion. The framework adopted for this initiative was subsequently used as a base for the development of the WHO Programme he now coordinates which is firmly centred on a healthy ageing/life course perspective.
From 1978 - 1984 Dr Kalache was a clinical lecturer at the Department of Community Health, Oxford University. In 1978 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, Royal College of Physicians, London.
Dr Kalache first became interested in ageing issues while studying for his Master of Science degree in Social Medicine at the University of London (1975‑1977). His PhD thesis (University of Oxford) was on breast cancer epidemiology.
Early in his career, after his medical graduation in Rio de Janeiro , his home town, Dr Kalache was an assistant lecturer in clinical medicine with a special interest on infectious diseases and on medical education.Alan I. Leshner, PhD
Dr. Leshner has been Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Executive Publisher of the journal Science since December 2001. AAAS (triple A-S) was founded in 1848 and is the world's largest, multi-disciplinary scientific and engineering society.
Before coming to AAAS, Dr. Leshner was Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) from 1994-2001. One of the scientific institutes of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, NIDA supports over 85% of the world's research on the health aspects of drug abuse and addiction.
Before becoming Director of NIDA, Dr. Leshner had been the Deputy Director and Acting Director of the National Institute of Mental Health. He went to NIMH from the National Science Foundation (NSF), where he held a variety of senior positions, focusing on basic research in the biological, behavioral and social sciences, science policy and science education.
Dr. Leshner went to NSF after 10 years at Bucknell University, where he was Professor of Psychology. He has also held long-term appointments at the Postgraduate Medical School in Budapest, Hungary; at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center; and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Dr. Leshner is the author of a major textbook on the relationship between hormones and behavior, and has published over 150 papers for both the scientific and lay communities on the biology of behavior, science and technology policy, science education, and public engagement with science.
Dr. Leshner received an undergraduate degree in psychology from Franklin and Marshall College, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physiological psychology from Rutgers University. He also holds honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Franklin and Marshall College and the Pavlov Medical University in St. Petersburg, Russia. Dr. Leshner is an elected fellow of AAAS, the National Academy of Public Administration, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and many other professional societies. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science. The U.S. President appointed Dr. Leshner to the National Science Board in 2004, and he represents AAAS on the U.S. Commission for UNESCO.
S. Jay Olshansky, PhD
S. Jay Olshansky received his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1984. He is currently a Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Research Associate at the Center on Aging at the University of Chicago and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The focus of his research to date has been on estimates of the upper limits to human longevity, exploring the health and public policy implications associated with individual and population aging, and global implications of the re-emergence of infectious and parasitic diseases. During the last fifteen years, Dr. Olshansky has been working with colleagues in the biological sciences to develop the modern "biodemographic paradigm" of mortality – an effort to understand the biological nature of the dying out process of living organisms. Dr. Olshansky's work on biodemography has been funded by a Special Emphasis Research Career Award (SERCA) and Independent Scientist Award (ISA) from the National Institute on Aging – awards that were designed to permit him to obtain additional training in the fields of evolutionary biology, molecular biology, genetics, epidemiology, population biology, anthropology and statistics.
Dr. Olshansky is the current president of the Society for the Study of Social Biology, he is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences and Biogerontology, he is on the editorial board of several other scientific journals, and is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the New York Academy of Sciences. Dr. Olshansky is also listed in Who's Who in Science and Engineering, Who's Who in American Education, Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare, and American Men & Women of Science. He was an invited speaker at the December, 2002 President's Council on Bioethics, Fortune Magazine's 2004 Brainstorm meeting, The Nobel Conference devoted to the science of aging, the 2005 UNESCO conference on Health and Longevity; and the Institute of Medicine - 2004, and has testified before the trustees of the Social Security Administration where his research has influenced forecasts of the nation's entitlement programs.
Dr. Olshansky is the recipient of a 2005/2006 Senior Fulbright Award to lecture in France; he is an advisor to U.S. Preventive Medicine; he has been invited to lecture on aging throughout the world; and has participated in a number of international debates on the future of human health and longevity. Dr. Olshansky is the first author of The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging (Norton, 2001).