Annual Bipartisan Congressional Awards Dinner

The Alliance for Aging Research held the 2016 Annual Bipartisan Congressional Awards Dinner on Tuesday, September 20, 2016, at the Willard InterContinental Hotel. The Alliance proudly honored the following individuals for their contributions to advance the science of human aging:

Speakers

Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA)

2016 Claude Pepper Award for Advancing Healthy Aging

Congresswoman Maxine Waters is considered by many to be one of the most powerful women in American politics today. She has gained a reputation as a fearless and outspoken advocate for women, children, people of color and the poor.

Elected in November 2014 to her thirteenth term in the U.S. House of Representatives with more than 70 percent of the vote in the 43rd Congressional District of California, Congresswoman Waters represents a large part of South Central Los Angeles including the communities of Westchester, Playa Del Rey, and Watts and the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County comprised of Lennox, West Athens, West Carson, Harbor Gateway and El Camino Village. The 43rd District also includes the diverse cities of Gardena, Hawthorne, Inglewood, Lawndale, Lomita and Torrance.

Congresswoman Waters serves as the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Financial Services. An integral member of Congressional Democratic Leadership, Congresswoman Waters serves as a member of the Steering & Policy Committee. She is also a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and member and past chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Learn more about the legacy of Claude Pepper, for whom this award has been named.

Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA)

2016 Distinguished Public Service Award Winner

Dr. Bill Cassidy is the United States Senator for Louisiana.

Bill grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and attended Louisiana State University (LSU) for undergraduate and Medical School.

For nearly three decades, Bill has provided care for uninsured and underinsured patients in Louisiana’s charity hospital system.

During this time, he co-founded the Greater Baton Rouge Community Clinic, a clinic providing free dental and health care to the working uninsured. Bill also created a private-public partnership to vaccinate 36,000 greater Baton Rouge area children against Hepatitis B at no cost to the schools or parents. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Bill led a group of health care volunteers to convert an abandoned K-Mart building into an emergency health care facility, providing basic health care to hurricane evacuees.

In 1990, Bill joined LSU Medical School teaching medical students and residents at Earl K. Long hospital, a hospital for the uninsured.

In 2006, Bill was elected to the Louisiana State Senate.

In 2008, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives to represent Louisiana’s Sixth Congressional District. In the U.S. House, Bill served on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

In 2014, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He serves on the Health Education Labor & Pensions (HELP), Energy and Natural Resources, Appropriations, Veterans Affairs and Joint Economic Committees.

Bill is married to Dr. Laura Cassidy and they have three children. Laura is a retired general surgeon specializing in breast cancer. She helped found a public charter school to teach children with dyslexia. Bill, Laura and their family attend church at the Chapel on the Campus.

Laura L. Carstensen, PhD

2016 Silver Innovator Award Winner

Laura L. Carstensen is Professor of Psychology at Stanford University where she is the Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy and founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. She is best known for socioemotional selectivity theory, a life-span theory of motivation. For more than twenty years her research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging and she was honored with a MERIT award in 2005. Her most current empirical research focuses on ways in which motivational changes influence cognitive processing. Dr. Carstensen is a fellow in the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association and the Gerontological Society of America. She has chaired two studies for the National Academy of Sciences, resulting in noted reports The Aging Mind and When I’m 64. She is a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on an Aging Society and serves on the National Advisory Council on Aging to NIA. Carstensen has won numerous awards, including the Kleemeier Award, The Kalish Award for Innovative Research and the Distinguished Mentorship Award from the Gerontological Society of America, as well as the Master Mentor Award from the American Psychological Association. She was selected as a Guggenheim Fellow in 2003. In 2011, she authored A Long Bright Future: Happiness, Health, and Financial Security in an Age of Increased Longevity. Carstensen received her B.S. from the University of Rochester and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from West Virginia University. She holds an honorary doctorate from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.

Robert Temple, M.D

2016 Indispensable Person of the Year Award Winner

Robert Temple serves as CDER’s Deputy Center Director for Clinical Science and also Acting Deputy Director of the Office of Drug Evaluation I (ODE-I). He has served in this capacity since the office’s establishment in 1995.

Dr. Temple received his medical degree from the New York University School of Medicine in 1967. In 1972 he joined CDER as a review Medical Officer in the Division of Metabolic and Endocrine Drug Products. He later moved into the position of Director of the Division of Cardio-Renal Drug Products.

In his current position, Dr. Temple oversees ODE-1 which is responsible for the regulation of cardio-renal, neuropharmacologic, and psychopharmacologic drug products. Dr. Temple has a long-standing interest in the design and conduct of clinical trials. He has written extensively on this subject, especially on choice of control group in clinical trials, evaluation of active control trials, trials to evaluate dose-response, and trials using “enrichment” designs.