Symposium 2021

2021 Symposium on Healthy Aging

Speakers

Max Guo

Max Guo, Ph.D., is the Chief of the Genetics and Cell Biology Branch, Division of Aging Biology at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), NIH. Trained as a molecular biologist and biochemist, he obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry on the study of RNA splicing with Dr. Alan Lambowitz from the Ohio State University in 1992. He did his postdoctoral training on oncogenes with Dr. J. Michael Bishop at the University of California at San Francisco. Before joining NIH as a Program Officer in 2002, he was an Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center of Johns Hopkins Medical School. He was a Program Officer of Genetics and Genomics at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) from 2002 to 2007. From 2008-2011, he was the Deputy Director of the Division of Metabolism and Health Effects, NIAAA. He joined NIA in 2011, responsible for the genetics and chromatin portfolio.

Cristal Hill

Dr. Hill is the recipient of the Dr. Norman Orentreich Award for Young Investigator on Aging, presented at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the American Aging Association (July 20-23, 2021), Madison, WI.

Cristal M. Hill grew up in Birmingham, Al., with ambitions in veterinary medicine, but a strong interest in endocrine diseases developed while working at a local veterinary clinic during high school. Dr. Hill received her BS and MS degrees in animal sciences from Tuskegee University, with a thesis centered on inflammatory responses during cardiovascular disease. She then moved to Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, where, under the direction of Dr. Andrzej Bartke, she earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology, microbiology, and biochemistry, with a heavy focus on the mechanisms of biological aging. She is a postdoctoral fellow mentored by Jacqueline M. Stephens and Christopher D. Morrison at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La. Dr. Hill received a Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers – Pathway to Independence Award (MOSAIC NIH K99/R00) for her current research focusing on the effect of dietary protein content on adipose tissue function during aging. She also received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship (Parent F32) for her earlier training and work focused on neuronal FGF21 signaling effects on metabolism during dietary protein restriction.

In the community, Dr. Hill is an advocate of connecting scientific data to the community through affiliations in both local and national organizations. She was a youth educator for the 4-H Club (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), a mentor for Big Brothers Big Sisters, and served on the community leadership board of Central Illinois for the American Diabetes Association. While living in Baton Rouge, she has assisted with numerous STEM programs in both a church and public setting. She is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and Rotary International.

Dr. Hill’s commitment to fostering diversity includes teaching at all levels and mentoring undergraduates at various minority-serving institutions. She has held the position of Vice-Chair and Secretary of the American Aging Association Trainee Chapter (AGE-TC) and now holds the position of Chair for the AGE-TC Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Opportunities Committee. Dr. Hill continues to support diversity by endorsing an environment of institutional inclusion in the biomedical research workforce for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds.

Alessandro Bitto

Dr. Bitto is an Acting Instructor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, Wash. He received his Ph.D. from Drexel University College of Medicine in 2013. From 2013-2018, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Washington Medical Center Department of Pathology.

Zhen Dong

Dr. Dong received her degree of Doctor of Public Health from the Penn State College of Medicine. Her doctoral research focused on nutritional epidemiology. She joined OFAS as an Affiliated in July 2019. She brings experience in designing and conducting both retrospective and prospective observational studies, spanning ecological, cross-sectional, case-control, and multi-center cohort studies, in various chronic disease areas. In addition to her work at OFAS, she is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Public Health at Penn State. Dr. Dong’s recent work has focused on exploring the associations between consumption of sulfur amino acids and human chronic diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer.

Jay Johnson

Dr. Johnson received his doctorate in Molecular Biology from Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH). His post-doctoral work at Fox Chase Cancer Center (Philadelphia, PA) used a liposarcoma model system to investigate the maintenance of telomeres, important nucleoprotein structures with roles in aging and cancer. Dr. Johnson then joined the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), where his early work explored cellular defects in patients with Werner and Bloom’s syndromes, genetic diseases characterized by accelerated aging and cancer predisposition. Dr. Johnson’s recent work has focused on exploring the mechanistic basis of the benefits of restriction in S. cerevisiae and cultured mouse and human cells.

Sailendra (Nath) Nichenametla

Dr. Nichenametla received his PhD in Integrative Biosciences from Pennsylvania State University (Hershey, PA) and DVM from Sri Venkateswara Veterinary University (Tirupati, India). He has a longstanding interest in understanding how genetics and the environment—diet, in particular—shape health. During graduate and postdoctoral training, he investigated the effects of bioactive compounds in milk, berries, and dietary fiber on diseases such as colon cancer and metabolic syndrome. While training for his PhD, he investigated how genetic variation in humans alters an individual’s capacity to combat oxidative stress and risk for cancers.

Thomas Olsen

Thomas Olsen is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Nutrition at the University of Oslo. He holds a PhD from the University of Oslo (2020) and has worked in the field of nutritional and molecular epidemiology and pilot clinical trials with focus on homocysteine metabolism and sulfur amino acids since 2013. He is now working primarily on a clinical trial examining dietary sulfur amino acid restriction in overweight and obese individuals and is involved in a pilot drug trial on the cysteine-lowering effects on obesity. His main interests outside sulfur amino acids are related to methodology in nutritional epidemiology and clinical trials as well as data analysis.

Manali Potnis

Manali Potnis is a Ph.D. candidate working with Dr. Christian Sell at the Drexel University in Philadelphia. Her research examines the role of long-non-coding RNA H19 in aging and senescence. She received her master’s in Molecular Biology from Drexel University. She is the recipient of The Aging Initiative fellowship, a college-wide initiative to support research in basic biology of aging. In addition to her research, she served as a student liaison for the Women in Medicine and Science Committee (WiMSC).

Christian Sell

Christian Sell obtained his undergraduate training at the State University of New York in Binghamton. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Albany Medical College and postdoctoral training at Temple University and Thomas Jefferson University. He joined the Faculty of the Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1994 as an Assistant Professor. He moved his research to the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (Wynwood, PA) in 1998 and subsequently joined the faculty of the Drexel University College of Medicine (Philadelphia). His early research work focused on the role of IGF-1 signaling in cancer. He identified the IGF-1 receptor as critical for the transformed phenotype and as an anti-apoptotic factor. This work led to the use of anti-IGF strategies as anticancer therapy and set the stage for multiple clinical studies on the potential for anticancer therapies targeting the IGF-I signaling pathway. The basic biology of aging and has been a research focus in Dr. Sell’s laboratory for a number of years. He has performed studies on the influence of the growth hormone/IGF-1 axis on longevity, the comparative biology of aging, and the lifespan extending properties of rapamycin on human cells. His work has been featured on 60 Minutes and in multiple publications, including Philadelphia Magazine. He has published over 80 articles and book chapters and is the editor of the book, Exceptional Longevity, Single Cell Organisms to Man. Dr. Sell’s work has been cited over 9,000 times in the scientific literature.

Kathrine Vinknes

Kathrine J. Vinknes is a Researcher at Department of Nutrition at the University of Oslo. She has a PhD from University of Oslo (2014) in nutritional and molecular epidemiology where she examined the relations between dietary nutrients, fatty acid profile, sulfur amino acids and body composition in large human populations. From 2015-2019 she led dietary pilot trials to assess the feasibility of a diet restricted in sulfur amino acids (SAA) and its short-term effects on biomarkers and gene expression patterns. In her current projects she implements human clinical intervention studies and drug pilot trials to evaluate the effects of sulfur amino acids in relation to energy metabolism and obesity, aiming to translate the beneficial effects of SAA restriction in animal and experimental models to humans.