The Biodemography of Aging Research Unit (BARU) is an interdisciplinary team of established researchers with expertise ranging from demography/actuarial science to mathematics/physics, biology/genetics and health services research. The synergistic potential of BARU is the key to advancing research in the fields of health span, aging, and lifespan in an integrative manner.
Our group includes the founding members of CPHA, which has become a world-class center in research on health span, aging, and lifespan with support from the NIH/NIA and the VA. National and international recognition of our approach as an innovative and successful paradigm for the analysis of complex problems in health span, aging, and lifespan has attracted well-established scholars from local and international research centers to CPHA.
The organizing principle of BARU is that a truly interdisciplinary team of researchers who work closely together can substantially enhance the research potential of each team member and, as a consequence, the productivity of the entire team. The scientific productivity of BARU is reflected in its numerous groundbreaking peer-reviewed scientific publications.
Recognition of the cutting-edge research approaches of BARU helped the team to secure funding from the NIH/NIA for a major program project on the “Relationships between Genetic Regulators of Aging, Health and Lifespan”, and for the project “Genetics of Changes in Population Pyramids: Implications for Health Forecasting”, along with several smaller research projects. This funding lays the groundwork for further expansion of BARU to meet emerging challenges, including super-massive databases, in conducting integrative research on the genetic and non-genetic bases of health span, aging, and lifespan.
