Institute of Healthy Ageing

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IHA Governance

Origins of the IHA

Work on the creation of the UCL Institute of Healthy Ageing began in March 2004, and has been taken forward by a large team, including a cross-faculty Steering Committee whose membership, included Prof. Arne Akbar, Prof. Ed Byrne, Prof. Leon Fine, Dr. David Gems, Prof. Bob Lieberman, Prof. Peter Mobbs, Prof. Dame Linda Partridge, Dr. Mary Phillips, Prof. Mike Spyer, Prof. Patrick Vallance and Prof. Dominic Withers, with strong support from the UCL Provost, Prof. Malcolm Grant.

Development and Governance of the IHA

The Institute of Healthy Ageing (Director: Prof. Dame Linda Partridge, FRS, DBE) replaced the earlier Centre for Research on Ageing in Autumn 2007.

The Institute now hosts the labs of six PIs with numerous funding sources between them including the Wellcome Trust, The Royal Society and MRC amongst others.  As well as the substantial labs of Professor Linda Partridge and Dr David Gems, the labs of the following are housed within the IHA in UCL's Darwin Building:

• Dr. Daniel Pearce joined the IHA in Autumn 2007, on a tenure track position with an RCUK Fellowship, to set up a new research group working on ageing in haematopoietic stem cells.
• Dr. Eugene Schuster, previously of the European Bioinformatics Institute, joined the IHA in January 2008 as an MRC Senior Research Fellow. He is applying functional genomic approaches to understand long lived animal models.
• Dr Lazaros Foukas joined as a Lecturer in June 2009 to study signalling pathways that control mammalian ageing.
• Dr Matt Piper, already a post-doc in the Partridge lab, was awarded his own Fellowship by the Royal Society in August 2011. His work focuses on Dietary Restriction (DR or calorie restriction) - an evolutionarily conserved intervention that extends healthy lifespan.

The activities of the IHA received a strong boost by a 5.1 million pound Strategic Award from the Wellcome Trust.

Strategic management of the IHA

A strategic overview of the activities of the IHA is maintained by its Steering Committee.  All P.Is within the Institute are members of the Steering Committee together with Julie Black and Giovanna Vinti who represent the support activities. The Committee meets quarterly to discuss and review latest research and strategic plans.

Further news

In 2010 Linda Partridge took on an additional role assisting with the founding of new Max Planck Institute in Cologne dedicated to the biology of ageing. She remains the Director of the IHA, with support from Prof Nick Wood and Dr David Gems as joint Deputy Directors. The close links that have developed between the IHA and the MPI, are helping to strengthen and enliven both institutions.