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The SRF team is composed of mission-driven individuals who work tirelessly toward our goal of ending age-related disease. Our team size fluctuates during the year with the addition of SRF Educational Summer Scholars and Post–Baccalaureates, however our full-time employees are listed below.
Previously serving as SRF’s Executive Director, Lisa worked closely with the organization’s preceding CEOs for more than a decade, dedicating her expertise towards building all aspects of the organization. With an educational background in Life Sciences and industry experience in microbiology, stem cells, and flow cytometry, Lisa joined SRF in 2010 as a volunteer in the laboratory. She transitioned into organizational administration in early 2012, and with a strong focus on finance and operations advanced into greater roles that balanced the financial, research, educational, and outreach operations of the organization. A Bay Area transplant from the Midwest, she is fully dedicated to advancing rejuvenation biotechnologies and guiding SRF forward as a significant and leading-edge contributor in this rapidly growing field.
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.
Maria is a radical-change believer and spends most of her multifaceted life working on facilitating disruptive change to the way we currently treat aging. You can find her giving a talk about the future of aging, singing live for thousands of people, composing and acting for a Hollywood film or flying an airplane. Her passion and strong involvement in science and technology, combined with her skills in Public Relations, positioned her as Director of Outreach in charge of building new relationships for SRF, spreading the word about its work and driving donations.
Lilli joins SRF following her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Davis. There, as a USDA NIFA Fellow, she investigated the activation of the embryonic genome in hopes to identify better embryos and eventually improve in vitro fertilization to more efficiently produce cattle for the beef and dairy industries, and improve development rates in clinical embryology settings. She completed her Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology at the University of Toledo. She led an international team of scientists to discover a second, atypical centriole in human and cattle sperm, which functions during fertilization and development.
Lilli founded the UT Careers in Science Committee, held executive roles in the UT Graduate Student Association, and participated in the Frontiers in Stem Cell and Cancer training program. These experiences have fueled her passion for building equitable representation in advanced training opportunities, in order to inspire and support the next generation of pioneers in the field of anti-aging. Lilli is thrilled to harness her passion with SRF’s forward-focused mission of mitigating and preventing damage caused by aging.
Kelly joined SRF in early 2018 after completing her B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of Maryland in 2017. She recently moved from the Bay Area back to her hometown – Baltimore, Maryland. While in California, she volunteered at a Wig Bank for cancer patients. She currently volunteers as a Crisis Counselor with the Crisis Text Line, which she has been doing since 2017. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, reading, cuddling her two cats, and baking (especially pies)!
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.
A graduate of Florida State University, Jessica comes to us from the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, CA. She has years of experience in nonprofits, and a Diversity and Inclusion Certification from eCornell. Her passion for social justice is matched by her desire to combat diseases that afflict the aging. Having witnessed the effects of Parkinson’s disease on a close family member, she is committed to teaming with SRF to fund and research regenerative medicine. Jessica hopes to see future generations avoid these degenerative diseases of the aging.
Katrina got her B.S. in biology from University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She joined SRF at the start of 2022, after time spent working in quality control in the pharmaceutical industry. She is a Baltimore native, but recently moved to Harford, MD, just north of her hometown. She enjoys spending her free time with her fiancé and their cats and ferrets.
Dr Amutha Boominathan is the Group Lead for the MitoSENS program at SENS Research Foundation. She joined SRF in 2013 as a Senior Research Scientist and became the Group Lead for the program in 2016. She completed her graduate studies from the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, India with a PhD in Biochemistry. Subsequently, through an American Heart Association postdoctoral fellowship, she obtained further training at the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University where she studied mitochondrial biogenesis with a focus on protein import and the fusion and fission mechanisms in the organelle. She has over 20 years of experience in mitochondrial biology.
Dr. Yafei Hou received his PhD in Immunology from Peking Union Medical College in China and completed his postdoctoral training at Stanford University under the mentorship of Dr. Edgar Engleman. He has worked the past years dedicated to research in cancer immunology at UCSF and developing cancer immunotherapies in the biotech industry. Dr. Hou is excited to apply his past expertise and expand his research interests to the promising field of cellular senescence and aging.
Elena received her PhD in 2006 in Microbiology from the National University of Tashkent, Uzbekistan for her work demonstrating biological features of entomopathogenic bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis as a pest control agent. Elena has broad biological research experience in such areas as soil rhisosphere and soil restoration, insect pathology, bio-insecticides, proteomics, and protein crystallization.
Dr. Rebbaa received his PhD from Claude Bernard University, Lyon, France. He held research and faculty positions at Northwestern University, the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University. Over the course of his career, his research encompassed target and drug discovery and development in the fields of cancer, stem cells and aging. He served as a Principal Investigator on multiple grants, published over 40 manuscripts and reviewed manuscripts for several high impact scientific journals.
In his recent role at Ichor Therapeutics, he oversaw the discovery and preclinical testing of small molecule senolytics and biomarkers of aging. He will build on this knowledge and experience to take over an innovative project at the RepleniSENS program to study the effect of a combination therapy using senolytics and stem cell transplantation on reducing the functional decline caused by aging. He will also be using various in vitro and in vivo models to help advance translation of promising anti-aging therapeutics discovered at SRF.
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. 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.
Carly received her B.S. in Biology from American University, Washington D.C. in 2020. After returning to the Bay Area, she joined SRF in September 2020 as a postbaccalaureate research fellow in the MitoSENS Team and is now a full time researcher, investigating the allotopic expression of mitochondrial genes.
Daniel received his B.S. in Computer Science from Biola University with minors in Communications and Bible Studies. In March of 2020, he helped Christian Churches to use Virtual Reality Headsets to continue connecting no matter the distance. While imagining the future, he stumbled upon Isaac Arthur’s Youtube Channel podcast on “The Science of Aging” that explained the 7 fields of SENS Research. Inspired to contribute, he joined the SRF team and hopes to glean wisdom from these brilliant PhDs while sharing optimism for regenerative research with the people around him, both in Virtual Reality and the physical world.
Ben is a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge (2007), where he studied biochemistry and pathology. He has a long-standing interest in the reversal of human age-related degeneration and has been dedicated to the development of the SENS platform since completing his academic studies, initially holding a post with Methuselah Foundation before transferring to SRF on its establishment; for much of that time he also served as assistant/deputy editor for the journal Rejuvenation Research. Ben is a committed generalist whose work has spanned a range of biomedical fields according to the needs of the organization. He is also SRF’s primary in-house web developer, and is responsible for the technical implementation and maintenance of sens.org.
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.
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