Photo by Erin Ashford
SRF staff is composed of mission-driven individuals who work tirelessly toward our goal of ending age-related disease. Our staff size fluctuates during the year with the addition of SRF Educational Summer Scholars and Post–Baccalaureates, however our full-time employees are listed below.
Matthew was awarded his Master’s degree at Northwestern Medical in 1999 for his work studying behavioral neuroscience in aged rodents. In 2005, at Baylor College of Medicine he received a PhD in Biochemistry for his work on proteins that regulate human telomeres. Postdoctoral research includes work at UC Berkeley on muscle stem cells and aging. Since 2010, Dr. O’Connor has headed up the MitoSENS project at the research center in Mountain View, California. His research is focused on “allotopic expression” of mitochondrial genes where his team is engineering mitochondrial genes to be expressed from the nucleus and targeted to the mitochondia. Since 2012 Dr. O’Connor has had broad oversight over many areas of research at SRF. Matthew O’Connor is passionate about performing basic research to combat the diseases and disabilities of aging.
Alexandra has dedicated her scientific career to the understanding and development of rejuvenation biology. She holds a PhD from Humboldt University Berlin for her work on degradation of damaged proteins by aged microglia, and received her Habilitierung (Professorial Qualification) at the University of Leipzig, Germany for her thesis “Modification of aging in mesenchymal stem cells”
She worked at the Kroto Research Institute (UK) and as Group leader and deputy Head of Department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology (Germany). She was tenured in 2018 as a full Professor for Biogerontological Engineering at Loughborough University, UK. In addition she has worked as VP for Research and CSO in start-up companies in the rejuvenation biology sector.
She has over 70 academic publications and has led several international research consortia.
Her research in aging spans areas including regenerative medicine, cell & gene therapy development and neurodegenerative diseases.
Over the course of his career, Greg has used his academic and industrial research experiences to support educational enrichment and training efforts. He has taught at such institutions as the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). During his time at CSHL and the Bay Area Biotechnology Education Consortium (BABEC), he developed new curriculum aimed at fostering hands-on, inquiry-based learning. His thesis at Stanford University focused on DNA damage repair, while his postdoctoral research at the DNAX Research Institute (now Merck) examined the role of DNA damage checkpoints in cancer therapeutics. As the SRF Director of Education, Greg has drawn from these experiences to create the SRF Summer Scholars and Postbaccalaureate Fellowship Programs to train the next generation of scientists who will drive the rejuvenation biotechnology field forward.
Dr. Tesfahun Admasu was awarded a master’s degree in Biochemistry from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, and a PhD in Biochemistry from the National University of Singapore. During his PhD studies (2014-18), he identified drug synergy and investigated the mechanism based on “multi-omics” technology. This work led to seminal contributions to our understanding of aging and lifespan extension which were published in Developmental Cell and Nature Scientific Data. Dr. Tesfahun joined the University of Gondar and launched a master’s degree program in Biochemistry where he teaches Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. At the SRF-RC, Dr. Tesfahun applies CRISPRa/CRSPRi and next generation sequencing based transcriptome profiling to investigate the mechanisms of SASP induced senescence and apoptosis resistance of senescent cells.
Amelia earned her Bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2018. Putting a lifelong love of science to work, she began at SRF as a summer intern in 2017 and is now a full time computational biochemist on the atherosclerosis project. Amelia loves her dog Bode, science jokes, and playing outside.
Dr. Amit Sharma was awarded a Master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences from Delhi University, India. He received his PhD in 2009 in Biotechnology from University of Pune for his work demonstrating microRNA regulation of cytokines invovled in allergic inflammation in mice models. Dr. Sharma’s postdoctoral research at the Buck Institute, Novato, California involved investigating novel molecular regulatory pathways in regards to genotoxic stress and cellular senescence in invertebrate and mammalian models.
Dr. Sharma has recently joined SENS Research Foundation as Group Lead in the Senescence Immunology Research Group (“ImmunoSENS”). His research focus involves studying how aging and senescence affects the immune system and his research group will also investigate strategies to harness the immune system in mitigating deleterious effects of senescent cells with translational focus.
SRF is at the center of the rejuvenation biotechnology industry and supports the mission to end age-related disease through Research, Education, and Outreach. Make your career something you can believe in – something that can change the world.
If you are a research scientist working in a SENS-related field, you may wish to submit a grant proposal for consideration by our Research Development Committee.
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