Kamil Pabis is in his second year of university and has been working with the SENSFAI since 2009.  He is currently studying biology at the University of Vienna.

 After completing his degree, Kamil plans to pursue his PhD and eventually a career in Molecular Biology or Biogerontology.

His first and current project with SENSFAI is a research paper related to vascular calcification.

You can read the text of our interview below.

How did you become interested in studying biology and gerontology?

I have always been interested in biology, generally all the life sciences, but on the other hand also engineering. One could say "science" in general.

The choice of my field of study basically came down to a coin toss between the closest contenders, but not because I wasn't particularly interested in any of them. To the contrary, I was highly interested in several fields. Eventually I decided to study biology among other reasons, perhaps due to gotten involved with the community at imminst.org. I'm pursuing a Bachelor's degree but plan to continue and work towards a PhD. I am a little more than halfway through.

After graduation, do you have a particular career path in mind?

I would like to work in the field of bio-gerontology and especially work on definitive treatments for aging, not just stop-gap solutions. However, I also want to broaden my knowledge in all the related and interesting fields e.g. medicine, molecular biology and biochemistry; engineering; life styles related to life extension and the 'human enhancement' movement.

What led you to become involved in biology and gerontology?

Beyond my general interest in biology that we discussed before, the specialisation I chose came down to chance again. The number of interesting subfields in biogerontology and beyond is astounding and I could imagine working on a number of them. My first SENS project is in the field of vascular disease, so I decided to primarily, but not exclusively, focus on CVD and CV-aging.

How did you become interested and involved in the SENS Foundation and SENSFAI?

The first thing I read about SENS were Michael Rae's exceptionally lucid and convincing contributions to this topic. I'm sure if it wasn't for his posts it would have taken me much longer to discover the merits of SENS and related ideas.

Perhaps, true to the idea that ‘any publicity is good publicity’, criticism leveled against SENS, including the Technology Review controversy, further boosted my interest and enthusiasm. Despite criticism Aubrey's approach struck me, basically an interested laymen at that time, as perfectly valid and elegant.

Could you briefly describe your current research efforts for SENSFAI and how they support the core mission of the SENS Foundation?

I research vascular (and in part general) calcification and their relation to aging and age-related tissue decline. The impact of calcification could be major and under-appreciated, but unfortunately we do not have definitive data.

This basic research lays the ground work for future projects. A relatively thorough understanding is required to distinguish the most promising therapies for actual reversal of the pathology. Eventually I plan to help facilitate and do research under a "regression first" paradigm.

Do you think your involvement with SENSFAI will influence your future career? How so?

I hope (and am convinced) that in the future bio-gerontologists will appreciate the idea of SENS considerably more than they do now. Therefore my involvement should have a very positive impact. And in any case it remains an eye-catching conversation starter.

What other projects would you like to work on with a SENS focus?

I would like to work on other similar topics of course, but would also be interested in pursuing research around these topics: Tissue regeneration (limbs, scarless healing, etc), the influence of phosphate metabolism on aging and disease (this is more a general biogerontology topic), Cardiovascular Disease in general, and atherosclerosis specifically (e.g. the lysoSENS or other approaches)