Luigi Ferrucci

I am currently the Scientific Director of the National Institute on Aging. I am both an epidemiologist and geriatrician. My area of focus is understanding the origin of phenotypic variation of the human phenotype with aging and how they contribute to physical disability, in order to identify potential targets of prevention and cure. Over the last 30 years, I have participated in designing, consolidating, analyzing, and publishing results from some of the largest epidemiological studies on aging performed in the United States and Europe. My current interest is studying the biological, phenotypic and functional manifestations of aging and how damage accumulation across these metrics is modulated by resilience mechanism that have been evolutionally selected over millions of years. My goals included the identification of the environmental stressors that affect the speed of aging and understanding how these stressors are sensed and encode response mechanisms that are compensatory in nature but that can results in accelerated damage accumulation later in life. Ultimately, my goal is to contribute to the science aimed at slowing down the aging process, therefore preventing some of its negative consequences on physiology, pathology, physical and cognitive function, and quality of life.