Sarah Dys, PhD, MPA, is a senior research associate at the Institute on Aging at Portland State University with expertise in assisted living, residential care, and memory care communities and resident population health and outcomes. She is an early career member of the Gerontology Society of America, where she has served in leadership roles within the Social Research, Policy, and Practice member section. Dr. Dys earned her doctorate in Community Health from the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health with a specialization in gerontology. Her professional vision is to center aging in public health discourse, particularly at the intersection of housing, health, and social services provision. She specializes in weaving together quantitative and qualitative methods to tell stories that highlight the voices of those who live and work in long-term services and support (LTSS).

Patricia Slattum, Ph.D., Pharm.D., is a pharmacist and geriatric clinical pharmacologist. She works part-time with the Virginia Center on Aging at VCU as the co-director of the Virginia Geriatric Education Center Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program. She develops a geriatrics-focused curriculum for interprofessional training and has more than twenty years of experience establishing pharmacy and interprofessional practice models serving older adults. She serves as faculty in the VCU Mobile Health and Wellness Program, an interprofessional teaching and care coordination program in low-income senior housing that she co-founded in 2012. Her role in these efforts is to facilitate the integration of age-friendly practice into primary care. Her strength is in applying team science principles to interdisciplinary community-engaged collaborative projects to facilitate project success. She also serves as a Visiting Scholar at the Gerontological Society of America and as Co-Editor in Chief of The Senior Care Pharmacist.

Dr. Chung (she/her) is an Associate Professor in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University. Her program of research is directed toward developing, applying, and evaluating technology applications and AI/machine learning to detect early functional changes and social isolation risks, which may lead to adverse health outcomes. Focusing on technology-enabled prevention and proactive interventions, she aims to promote healthy aging in community-dwelling older adults, including those with health disparities. Additionally, she continues to work on advancing the technology implementation science by exploring the acceptability of digital health technology among older adults and caregivers in a sociocultural context. She utilizes design thinking to create user-centered technology solutions that meet the needs of older adult users. Dr. Chung's ultimate goal is to develop a community-based informatics approach that supports older adults in aging in place, maximizing their independence and function through the end of life.

Dr. Manka Nkimbeng is a nurse scientist and assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and an Affiliate assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing. Before that, she was a Robert L. Kane Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. She received her Ph.D. in nursing from the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, her MPH from the Boston University School of Public Health, and her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She works with communities to develop and test culturally appropriate interventions that can be translated into health policies and clinical practice to improve health and eliminate health inequities for older adults.

Dr. Yousefzadeh’s laboratory utilizes in vitro and in vivo models of aging to explore the effect of senescent cells, in particular senescent immune cells, on driving organismal aging. The mechanistic studies of cell and cell non-autonomous effects provide insight into interorgan communication and how different pillars of aging can serve to drive aging in a tissue or cell type-specific manner. Using samples from human and animal models of aging, the laboratory focuses on developing useful biomarkers of aging with translational potential. Lastly, the laboratory uses models of natural aging, accelerated aging, and preclinical models of disease to test the efficacy of geroprotective compounds like senolytics.