Advances in healthy ageing of the brain and eye: exploring mechanisms and the role of micronutrients

Andrea Maier (1978), a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP), graduated in Medicine (MD) 2003 from the University of Lübeck (Germany), was registered 2009 in The Netherlands as Specialist in Internal Medicine-Geriatrics and was appointed Full Professor of Gerontology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in 2013. She was the head of Geriatrics at the Vrije Universiteit Medical Center from 2012 to 2016. From 2016 to early 2021 Professor Maier served as Divisional Director of Medicine and Community Care at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia, and as Professor of Medicine and Aged Care at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Professor Maier’s research focuses on unraveling the mechanisms of ageing and age-related diseases. During the last 10 years she has conducted multiple international observational cohort studies and intervention trials and has published more than 350 peer-reviewed articles, achieving an H index of 63, spearheading the significant contributions of her highly acclaimed innovative, global, multidisciplinary @Age research group. She is a frequent guest on radio and television programs to disseminate aging research and an invited member of several international academic and health policy committees, including the WHO. She is the past president of The Australian and New Zealand Society for Sarcopenia and Frailty Research, the founding president of the Healthy Longevity Medicine Society and serves as selected Member of The Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities.

Sidong Li, PhD.

Postdoctoral research fellow, Institute of Public Health Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China & Division of Preventive Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Li’s research primarily focuses on the epidemiology and prevention of cardiovascular disease and aging-related chronic diseases through lifestyle and nutrition, and on integrating cutting-edge omics technologies to elucidate how risk factors/interventions influence cardiometabolic health and the aging process. Dr. Li has led several projects to understand the interplay among dietary supplements, biological aging, and long-term chronic diseases across several large-scale primary prevention trials, including the Physicians’ Health Study (PHS), the COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS), and the VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL). Dr. Li is also specialized in the design, methodology, and conduct of epidemiologic studies and randomized clinical trials. Dr. Li has published more than 50 scientific papers to date, including multiple first-author papers in journals such as Nature Medicine, JAMA, European Heart Journal, and JAMA Cardiology. Dr. Li was awarded the EPI Early Career Travel Grant by the American Heart Association and the Top 10 epidemiological and clinical research for cardiovascular disease in China by the China Heart Congress.

Weiqi Zhang

China National Center for Bioinformation and Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Dr. Weiqi Zhang is a Principal Investigator at the National Center for Bioinformation, and a Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the School of Medicine, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. She received the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars and is an Outstanding Young Scholar Awardee of the Beijing Natural Science Foundation. She serves as the Chief Scientist of a National Key R&D Program of China and has received honors including the Zhong Nanshan Youth Innovation Award and the Outstanding Young Investigator Award in Stem Cell Research. Her research focuses on aging and aging-related diseases. She currently serves as Vice Chairperson of the Anti-Aging Branch of the China Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics. As corresponding or co-corresponding author, she has published dozens of papers in journals such as Cell and Nature, and has been consecutively listed among the “World’s Top 2% Scientists”. Her research achievements have been repeatedly selected among the “Top 10 Scientific Advances in China” and the “Top 10 Advances in Life Sciences in China.”