“To the degree that people reach old age mentally sharp, physically fit, and financially secure, the problems of individual and societal aging fall away.”
- Laura L. Carstensen, Director
In less than one century, life expectancy has increased by an average of 30 years in developed regions of the world. Quite suddenly, there are more people living longer in the world than ever before in human history and they are accounting for an increasingly greater percentage of the world population. Improved longevity is, at once, among the most remarkable achievements in all of human history and one of our greatest challenges. These added years can be a gift or a burden to humanity depending upon how they are used.
The mission of the Stanford Center on Longevity is to redesign long life. The Center studies the nature and development of the human life span, looking for innovative ways to use science and technology to solve the problems of people over 50 and improve the well-being of people of all ages.
Meeting these challenges includes changing our public policies as well as personal behavior. Redesigning long life means appreciating the unique challenges of aging, as well as the great value older people contribute to a society.
The Center aims to use increased life expectancy to bring about profound advances in the quality of life from early childhood to old age. To inspire change of this scale, the Center brings together experts from academia, business and government to target important challenges and opportunities for older people.
The Center has three research divisions (Mind, Mobility and Financial Security) and two research programs (Global Aging and Politics, Scholars and the Public). The Center’s unique “launch” conferences bring together academic collaborators with business, government and non-profit leaders to find solutions to longevity challenges. The Center’s courses at Stanford foster student awareness and understanding of longevity and life-span issues.
The Center works to make sure that research findings are not shared only in scholarly journals, but reach policymakers, business leaders, and others who will use them to improve our society.
Nearly 140 Stanford faculty members are Center affiliates. Their research ranges from developing healthy nutritional habits and building assistive robots, to pursuing stem cell research and improving health care delivery.
The Center’s research projects are designed to provide information to policymakers and business leaders, and bring them together with the research community. By fostering dialogue among these typically disconnected worlds, the Center aims to develop workable solutions to urgent issues confronting America as our population ages.
The Center was founded by two of the world’s leading authorities on longevity and aging. Laura L. Carstensen, PhD is the founding director. A professor of psychology at Stanford, she has won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her research has been supported for more than 20 years by the National Institute on Aging. Thomas Rando, MD, PhD, professor of neurology and neurological sciences, is deputy director. His research on aging has demonstrated that it is possible to identify biochemical stimuli that can induce stem cells in old tissues to repair injuries as effectively as in young tissues. This work has broad implications for the fields of regenerative medicine and stem cell transplantation.
