James E. Birren is currently Associate Director of the Center on Aging at the University of California, Los Angeles, and serves as an adjunct professor in medicine, psychiatry, and biobehavioral sciences. He is also professor emeritus of gerontology and psychology at the University of Southern California. Dr. Birren's previous postions include service as Chief of the section on aging of the National Institute of Mental Health, founding Executive Director and Dean of the Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center of USC, founding Director of the Anna and Harry Borun Center for Gerontological Research at UCLA, and President of the Gerontological Society of America, the Western Gerontological Society, and the Division on Adult Development and Aging of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Birren's many awards include the Brookdale Foundation Award for Gerontological Research, the Sandoz prize for Gerontological Research, and the award for outstanding contribution to gerontology by the Canadian Association of Gerontology. Author of over 250 scholarly publications, Dr. Birren has research interests including how speed of behavior changes with age, the causes and consequences of slowed information processing in the older nervous system, the effect of age on decision-making processes, and the role of expertise in skilled occupations. He has served as a delegate to several White House Conferences on Aging and continues to have a strong interest in developing national priorities for research and education related to issues of aging.
Dr. Johnson is Associate Professor for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he teaches and conducts research on the genetics of aging and of alcoholism. He is widely recognized as "the major player" in the field of the genetics of aging. Among numerous other awards, he is the 1993 recipient of the Busse Research Award for Biomedical Gerontology, presented at the International Association for Gerontology meeting in Budapest, Hungary. Dr. Johnson is a member of biological and Clinical Again: An Initial Review Group of the NIA, is on the Board of Managing Editors for Mutation Research Experimental Gerontology and Journals of Gerontology, Biological Sciences. He received the 1995 Nathan Shock Award for The Gerontology Research Center and has been elected Chair for the Gordon Conference on the Biology of Aging in 1997. A major part of his work continues to focus on the genetic basis of the aging processes, primarily in C. elegans.
Dr. Holbrook is an Investigator at the National Institute on Aging, where she serves as Chief of the Research Section on Gene Expression and Aging within the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biology. She is a member of a number of scientific societies, including the American Association for Advancement of Science, American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Gerontological Society of America. Her laboratory research focuses on molecular and cellular responses to stress and the importance of these defenses to the aging process. Specific areas of interest include the regulation and function of heat shock protein expression and signal transduction pathways controlling cellular response to genotoxic stress. Dr. Holbrook is internationally recognized for her contributions in these areas, both in the aging arena as well as the general scientific community. Author of over 100 scholarly articles, she has served as a constant-reviewer for a host of journals, granting agencies, and private organizations.
Dr. Morrison is the Willard T.C. Johnson Research Professor of Geriatrics and Adult Development (Neurobiology of Aging) and Professor and Co-Director of the Fishberg Research Center for Neurobiology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Dr. Morrison received his B.A. degree from Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He then went on to a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Floyd Bloom, in the A.V. Davis Center for Behavioral Neurobiology at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. Throughout his training and career as an independent scientist, Dr. Morrison's research has remained focused on the cellular and neurochemical organization of cerebral cortex. His interest in the basic organization of cerebral cortex led Dr. Morrison to carry out a series of detailed investigations of the cellular pathology of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. More recently, he has also focused on sublethal age-related changes in cortical circuits that might form the basis of selective vulnerability. He has published approximately 150 articles which reflect his dual interests in basic neurobiology of cerebral cortex and human neuropathology. Dr. Morrison is on the editorial board of several international journals, has served on N.I.H. study sections, and is on numerous advisory boards, including the Board of Directors for The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR). In addition, Dr. Morrison has received several awards, including the Moore Award (1992) for the best paper on Clinicopatholic correlation at the annual meeting of the American Association of Neuropathologists and a Faculty Scholar Award from the Alzheimer's Disease and Related disorders Association. In addition, Dr. Morrison was the RSL Visiting Professor of Geriatric Medicine in Australia in 1993, as well as the Smith, Kline and French Visiting Professor of Neuroscience in Australia in
