Keck Futures Initiative awards $1M for 15 research projects

PARADIGM SHIFT TOWARD POSITIVE HEALTH AND HEALTHSPAN OUTCOMES - $50,000
This project will bring together experts from many fields including orthopedic medicine, biomedicine, and spiritual, wellness, to focus on how orthopedic events will enhance orthopedic medicine and foster health care personnel diversity, facilitating culturally competent care.

SCOTT HOFER, Oregon State University, Corvallis
JEFFREY KAYE, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland
ILENE C. SIEGLER, Duke University, Durham, N.C.
AVRON SPIRO, Boston University

HEALTH AND HEALTHSPAN IN LONGITUDINAL STUDIES OF AGING - $75,000
These researchers will hold a conference to better understand age-related health changes by evaluating measurement and modeling approaches. Using current longitudinal studies of aging, participants will compare the various models, measures, and methods of assessing health and provide an empirical basis for harmonizing existing measures, suggesting novel ones, and eventually integrating health information from new and ongoing longitudinal studies across disciplines.

KENNETH MANTON, Duke University, Durham, N.C.

PLATEAUS IN HUMAN MORTALITY AND DISABILITY DYNAMICS AT ADVANCED AGES - $87,500
This project will examine data from National Long-Term Care Surveys from 1982 to 2004 with data for linked Medicare Part B files for the same dates to see if the age trajectory of human mortality and disability processes reaches a plateau or even declines, above age 95.

MAJA MATARIC and CALEB FINCH, University of Southern California, Los Angeles

SOCIALLY ASSISTIVE ROBOTICS FOR THE PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE HEALTH - $75,000
Socially assistive robotics (SAR) -- autonomous, intelligent, and companionable technology -- has the potential to positively impact the human healthspan. These researchers will develop and test SAR systems that provide individualized physical and cognitive exercises for improving motivation and function, in a socially engaging context, through social (not physical) human-machine interaction.

RICHARD MILLER, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
STEVEN AUSTAD, University of Texas, San Antonio
JUDITH CAMPISI, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif.
CALEB FINCH, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
LINDA MILLER, Nature Publishing Group, New York City
CHRISTOPHER K. PATIL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif.
WOODRING ERIK WRIGHT, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas

COMPARATIVE BIOGERONTOLOGY INITIATIVE - $75,000
These researchers will hold two meetings with senior scholars to develop a plan to test hypotheses about biological factors that control lifespan and healthspan, and compare tissues from multiple species of animals. The scholars are pathologists, comparative physiologists, methodologists, statisticians, and experts in the biology of aging.