October 10-13, 2022 
Virtual Conference

Felipe Sierra, PhD

Director for Geroscience in the INSPIRE Program; Former Director of the Division of Aging Biology at National Institute on Aging, NIH, USA

​

After training as a biochemist in his native Chile, Felipe Sierra obtained a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Florida in 1983. He worked in Switzerland (University of Geneva and then Nestlé) for 10 years, and then he returned to Academia at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, and later at the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research in Pennsylvania, a position concomitant with a primary appointment at the University of Chile in Santiago. In 2002, Dr. Sierra relocated again to the US, this time as Program Director within the Division of Aging Biology, NIA. He became the Director of this unit in April 2006, until his retirement in April 2020. At that time he took a leadership position in Toulouse, France, as Director for Geroscience in the INSPIRE Program. 

Together with Dr. Ron Kohanski, Dr. Sierra was also the co-founder and co-leader of the trans-NIH GeroScience Interest Group (GSIG). The group seeks to promote research on the “geroscience hypothesis” which states that slowing the rate of aging will delay the initiation or diminish the severity of adult-onset diseases and loss-of-resilience. He has received multiple recognitions for this work, including twice the NIH Director’s Awards, a BEACON Award and a Career Achievement Award from the American Aging Association.