Dr. Ganesh Babulal is an Associate Professor of Neurology at Washington University School of Medicine, and Director of two laboratories, The DRIVES Project and ARCHES. He is also a faculty member at the Institute of Public Health and a research associate at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. Dr. Babulal’s research seeks to understand the relationship between cognition and mental health and its impact on instrumental activities of daily living, such as driving, in healthy older adults and those with chronic neurological diseases. There is an intentional focus on healthy aging, protective factors that support brain health, and risk factors for dementia among older adults. Dr. Babulal has published eight book chapters and over 120+ scientific peer-reviewed research articles in high-impact journals, including Neurology, Journal of the American Medical Association, Alzheimer’s and Dementia, Annals of Neurology, Sleep, and the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Maiya Geddes is a Neurologist Scientist and Associate Professor at McGill University where she leads a lab at the Montreal Neurological Institute. Her research program aims to characterize the neurobiological underpinnings of motivated lifestyle behaviour change using neuroimaging, behavioural and computational approaches. She applies this new knowledge to design and implement clinical trials for neurodegenerative disease prevention, with the goal of helping older adults lead healthier and more fulfilling lives. Dr. Geddes completed medical school at UBC, a residency in Neurology at McGill followed by a CIHR postdoctoral fellowship at MIT and a second fellowship in Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry at Harvard. After her fellowship, she joined the faculty at Harvard before returning to McGill. Dr. Geddes is a Killam Scholar, the recipient of the 2024 Brain Canada Future Leaders award, the 2023 Alzheimer Society Research Program New Investigator Award, and the American Neuropsychiatric Association Career Development Award.

Duke Han, PhD, is a Diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology in Clinical Neuropsychology, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the National Academy of Neuropsychology, and a tenured Professor of Psychology, Family Medicine, Neurology, and Gerontology at the University of Southern California (USC). Dr. Han is interested in factors that impact cognition and decision making in aging. In addition to directing his own research lab, he serves as the Editor-In-Chief of The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences, Co-Director of the Scientific Research Network on Decision Neuroscience in Aging, and Co-Leader of the Research and Education Core for the USC Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

Karen Fingerman, PhD, is the Sonia Wilson Professor of Human Ecology and Professor of Human Development & Family Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. An internationally recognized scholar of adult development and aging, she directs the Texas Longevity Consortium and serves as Research Director of the NIA-funded Center on Aging & Population Sciences. Dr. Fingerman has published nearly 200 papers and chapters on social and emotional aspects of aging, including family, friendship, and caregiving ties. Her current projects include NIA-funded studies on caregiving for individuals with Lewy Body Dementia, young adult caregivers, hearing aid use in later life, and longitudinal investigations of family exchanges and daily well-being. She has received numerous honors for her scholarship and mentorship, including the Baltes Award for Distinguished Research Achievement in Psychology and Aging (APA, 2022) and the Distinguished Mentorship in Gerontology Award (GSA, 2020).

Hai-Xin Jiang is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology at Southwest University. Her research focuses on the psychosocial determinants of aging, particularly loneliness, social isolation, and their asymmetry in relation to physical and mental health in later life. Methodologically, her interests include structural equation modeling, multi-state Markov models, network analysis, and the application of machine learning to large-scale longitudinal datasets. Her related research has been published in journals such as The Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, Geriatric Nursing, and Clinical Gerontologist. Her recent project has decoded the key features distinguishing social resilience from social vulnerability and has constructed a biopsychosocial model of social asymmetry in later life. Jiang is committed to providing scientific evidence to inform public policy aimed at strengthening social resilience and promoting healthy aging.

Dr. Hu is an Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Policy, and Community Health (MPACH) at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston) School of Public Health. She received her Ph.D. in Survey and Data Science at the University of Michigan in 2018. Prior to joining UTHealth, Dr. Hu worked as an Assistant Research Scientist at the Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, where she currently holds an adjunct faculty position. Dr. Hu’s research interests include measurement errors in aging surveys, survey non-response, longitudinal survey data analysis and the use of machine learning in survey research. Dr. Hu is currently collaborating with the National Health and Aging Trends Study and National Study of Caregiving as a co-Investigator to enhance user outreach and evaluate new data collection designs.

Dr. Luke Stoeckel is a licensed clinical neuropsychologist and cognitive neuroscientist. He directs the Neuropsychological Change, Interventions, and Decision Science Programs in the Division of Behavioral and Social Research at the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Stoeckel completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard College, his PhD in Medical/Clinical Psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and his internship and postdoctoral training in clinical neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), McLean Hospital, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Harvard Medical School (HMS). Prior to joining NIH, he was the Director of Clinical Neuroscience at the MGH Center for Addiction Medicine, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, Affiliated faculty at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Engineering at MGH, and a Visiting Scientist at McLean Hospital and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT.

Jing Yu earned her PhD in psychology from the Institute of Psychology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2012 and was a visiting scholar at the University of Basel's Department of Psychology from 2014 to 2015. She is currently a professor of psychology at Southwest University in Chongqing, China. Her research centers on aging, including cognitive aging, sleep and aging, and social functioning in older adults. She has published over 70 peer-reviewed papers and received multiple grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Ministry of Education.

Zexi Zhou is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines daily stress and adaptive processes in successful aging, with a particular focus on the interplay between sleep and psychosocial experiences in older adults’ everyday lives. She is also interested in intergenerational relationships across the lifespan, studied through a culturally sensitive lens. Her work integrates multiple methods, including self-report surveys, neuroimaging, ecological momentary assessment, and real-life observational approaches such as accelerometry and naturalistic audio recordings. She has published over 20 papers in top-tier journals such as The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Journal of Neuroscience, and Journal of Psychosomatic Research. She received Steve Duck New Scholars Award from International Association for Relationship Research in 2024, and Anne Anastasi General Psychology Graduate Student Research Award from American Psychological Association in 2025.