Methuselah's Zoo: What Nature Can Teach Us About Living Longer Lives

Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute

Please join GMGI for a night of science by the sea at Rockport Music - Shalin Liu Performance Center.

Rockport Music-Shalin Liu Performance Center

"Evolution is cleverer than you are.” - Leslie Orgel, biochemistWith billions of years and species to experiment on, evolution has come up with solutions to common biological problems that humans may never have the time or talent to discover. The pharmaceutical industry has taken this advice seriously; most of our pharmaceuticals are derived from and inspired by nature. But ironically, the field of aging science has focused its efforts on species with short lifespans like fruit flies and mice. These animals are experimentally manageable but are demonstrably unsuccessful at combatting aging. Steven Austad, Ph.D., proposes an alternative approach: investigate nature’s biggest successes, like a 400-year old shark or a 200-year old whale, and use them as models for discovering novel anti-aging products and processes.Come join GMGI for a night of science by the sea at Rockport Music - Shalin Liu Performance Center as Dr. Austad tells the stories of some extraordinary animals, considering why, for example, animal species that fly live longer than earthbound species and why animals found in the ocean live longest of all. With opening remarks by Andrea Bodnar, Ph.D., GMGI's Donald G. Comb Science Director.Doors open at 5:30pm, lecture starts at 6pm.About the speaker:Steven Austad, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Professor and the inaugural Protective Life Endowed Chair in Healthy Aging Research in Department of Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) where he was Department Chair from 2014-2022. He is also founding Director and current Co-director of UAB’s Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging and has been Scientific Director of the New York-based American Federation for Aging Research for the past decade. Having published more than 200 scientific papers, Dr. Austad’s aging research, which ranges from the level of cells to the impact on society, has won multiple awards, including the National Institute on Aging’s Nathan A. Shock Award, the Robert W. Kleemeier Award, the Fondation IPSEN Longevity Prize, the Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction, and is the inaugural recipient of the George M. Martin Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New York Academy of Medicine, and the Gerontological Society of America.With an abiding interest in communicating science to the general public, he has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of National Public Radio, advised three major museum exhibitions on the biology of aging, and written more than 150 op-eds and essays for electronic and print media, including the Huffington Post, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, and Salon. He has also written four trade books -- Why We Age (1997) has been translated into nine languages, Real People Don’t Own Monkeys (2002, co-authored with his wife, J. Veronika Kiklevich), To Err is Human, To Admit It is Not and Other Essays (2022) and Methuselah’s Zoo: What Nature Can Teach Us about Living Longer, Healthier Lives (2022).

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