Steven Austad is the Senior Scientific Director and Interim Board of Directors’ Chair of the American Federation for Aging Research.  He is also a Distinguished Professor and the Protective Life Endowed Chair in Healthy Aging Research in Department of Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).  His research has won multiple international awards. In addition, he is Founding Director and current Co-director of UAB’s Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and 7 books and has authored more than 150 essays and op-eds in print and electronic media.