An International Scientific Advisory Board of experts met for the first visit on September 9 and 10, 2019 in Toulouse and gave way to a phase of consultation and reflection on INSPIRE deployment strategies and on possible synergies and leverage effects between the different partner research laboratories of the Toulouse University Hospital (University of Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier, Inserm and CNRS). It has a real strategic and advisory role.
It is made up of the following members:
Pr. Josef PENNINGER – Committee Chairman
Prof. Josef Penninger is an Austrian biomedical researcher specializing in molecular immunology. He was the Coordinator of the Amgen Research Institute in Toronto for several years before founding the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology at the Vienna Biocenter in 2002. He is the Scientific Director of the institute. In 2018, he became Director of the Life Sciences Institute affiliated with the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
His most prominent works include his innovative advances on the molecular mechanisms involved in osteoporosis and breast cancer, as well as the study of the spread of metastases. He has received numerous international awards such as the Descartes Prize, the Wittgenstein Prize awarded by the Austrian Government, the Ernst Jung Prize for Medical Excellence, an award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Era of Hope Innovation Award from the US Breast Cancer Research Program (Grant: U.S. Department of Defense and a second ERC Advanced).
Dr. John BEARD
Dr. John BEARD has held numerous positions in Public Health for the elderly in Australia. He was Director of Public Health issues during the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000, and then worked for three years as an epidemiologist at the New York Medical Academy in the United States. From January 2009 until December 2018, he was Director of the Department of Aging and Life Course at WHO where he launched the Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities in 2010. He successively held the positions of Vice-President and then President of the Global Agenda Council on Aging at the World Economic Forum (WEF). He has many international publications, and is involved in major international research projects. In addition, in 2015, he was the author of the World Report on Aging and Health for WHO and oversaw the development of a global strategy on aging and the action plans to be implemented, which were adopted in May 2016 by WHO members.
Finally, Dr. Beard also teaches at the University of New South Wales (Australia) and Peking University. He is Senior Advisor to the European Institute of Innovation and Technology and Commissioner of the US National Academy of Medicine on Health Longevity Initiative.
Pr. Jean-François DARTIGUES
Jean-François Dartigues is Professor Emeritus in Public Health at the University of Bordeaux. He is a neurologist by profession, and is the principal investigator of three French population cohorts based on aging: Paquid, 3C and AMI. He is particularly involved in research on the epidemiology of dementia, dependency and frailty.
Dr. Luigi FERRUCCI
Luigi Ferrucci, is a physician and researcher in epidemiology and geriatrics. He is currently the Scientific Director of the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Maryland. But prior to this position, he published extensive research works on aging and factors leading to disability, and more recently on biomarkers of biological aging. He is the author of more than 1500 publications in Medline (H-index >160) which earned him recognition as the most productive researcher in Italy and among the 0.01% of the most productive scientists in the world.
Pr. Tom KIRKWOOD
Tom Kirkwood is Professor Emeritus at the University of Newcastle, where he has headed the Institute for Aging and Health for the past 20 years and is Associate Dean. He is now Affiliate Professor at the University of Copenhagen and was Professor of Gerontological Biology at the University of Manchester, after establishing and heading a research unit at the British National Institute for Medical Research. At the same time, he has directed major research programs on the mechanisms of aging and on the complex factors that determine the different aging pathways (such as the Newcastle 85+).
Dr. Jeremy WALSTON
Jeremy David Walston is Professor of Geriatric Medicine in the Raymond and Anna Lublin Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at John Hopkins University. He is one of the pillars of the Older Americans Independence Center (OAIC), which develops interventions to improve the health and well-being of elderly people.
Working within multidisciplinary teams, he participated in the identification of altered or abnormal genes that play a role in obesity and type 2 diabetes, and developed the most widely used frailty phenotype to date, as well as identified and characterized key biological factors in frailty and end-of-life decline.
Recently his laboratory’s translational clinical research program focused on identifying molecules responsible for aging and the physiological changes contributing to frailty and age-related chronic diseases, and on converting these biological discoveries into clinically usable processes. Dr. Walston is also co-author of over 200 peer reviewed publications in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and The Journal of Gerontology.
Parallel to his role in the Older Americans Independence Center (OAIC), as well as with numerous entities of the American National Institutes of Health and several foundations, he continues his consultations in geriatric medicine and co-directs the Healthy Aging Program at John Hopkins and the Department of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology of the John Hopkins School of Medicine.
