Science Team
Michael R. Rose, Ph.D.,
Chief Scientist
Cristina Rizza, M.D.
Chief Medical Officer and Director
Marc Horwitz, R.Ph.
Pharmacist
Kennedy Matsagas
Laboratory Director
Christopher Hardy
Laboratory Manager
Michael R. Rose, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist
Michael Rose is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine. He attended the University of Sussex in 1976 where he conducted his doctoral studies under the supervision of Brian Charlesworth and John Maynard Smith. The subject of his doctoral research was the quantitative genetics of aging in Drosophila melanogaster. In 1979, Dr. Rose was awarded a N.A.T.O. Science Fellowship that took him to the University of Wisconsin – Madison, to work with James F. Crow at the Department of Genetics.
In 1981 Michael Rose joined the Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. There he set up a Drosophila laboratory and pursued postponed aging, beginning with the organismal physiology involved, particularly energetic metabolism. Rose and his students showed that resistance to various stresses was a key factor in postponed aging; flies with the genetic capacity to live longer are better able to resist stress at every adult age.
A 1987 invitation took Dr. Rose to California, where he joined the School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. In 1991, his book Evolutionary Biology of Aging was published. This work offered a view of aging that was a complete departure from the views that had dominated the aging field since 1960. The journal Evolution described the field of gerontology as having become “after Rose”.
In 1997, Rose was awarded the Busse Research Prize by the World Congress of Gerontology. His book Darwin’s Spectre: Evolutionary Biology in the Modern World, a popular introduction to the history and significance of evolutionary biology, was published in 1984. In 2004, a compendium of his laboratories’ research findings was published as Methuselah Flies: A Case Study in the Evolution of Aging. His latest books are, The Long Tomorrow, a popular account of his research on aging, Evolution and Ecology of the Organism (with L.D. Mueller), a lower-division textbook, and the upcoming Experimental Evolution: Concepts, Methods, and Applications of Selection Experiments (with T. Garland) . Michael Rose is also the author of over 250 published papers.
Cristina Rizza, M.D.
Chief Medical Officer and Director
Dr Rizza is an Internist and a Cardiologist. She has spent the past thirty years caring for mostly geriatric patients and has a life-long interest in the molecular genetics of aging. Dr. Rizza graduated Summa cum Laude from the University of Bologna, Italy in 1975. After moving to the U.S. in 1976, she received her training in Internal Medicine at the Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, New York and her Cardiology training at the UCLA VA program in Los Angeles. The author of several published papers, she has experience in basic and clinical research as-well-as drug testing for efficacy and toxicity.
In her role as Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Rizza is responsible for the biological and clinical annotation of Genescient’s inventory of genes associated with the diseases of aging. She is also involved in the selection of therapeutics for testing and in the recruitment and testing of successful therapeutic substance candidates in human subjects.
Tony Long is a Professor of Biology at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Long’s expertise is in genomics, including “association” studies required to connect specific genes to human aging. He is one of a handful of leaders in the analysis of genomic data. Tony is responsible for Genescient’s Genomics and Bioinformatics functions. He directs the genomic aspects of the company’s Research and Development, from gene expression in Drosophila to associations between human genes and aging.
Larry Mueller is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine. He received his Ph.D. in 1979 from the University of California, Davis, where he studied under Francisco Ayala. Mueller then went on to do postdoctoral research in theoretical population genetics with Marcus Feldman at Stanford University.
Prior to joining the faculty of the University of California, Irvine, Dr. Mueller was an Assistant and Associate Professor at Washington State University. Mueller has published over 70 papers in the fields of evolution, population, genetics and population ecology. He is also the author of Stability in Model Populations with Amitabh Joshi.
In his current research, Dr. Mueller applies experimental evolution to study problems like density-dependent natural selection and the evolution of late-life demographic patterns in Drosophila.
Dr. Villeponteau holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles (1977). He conducted Postdoctoral studies in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA, where he also served as a Research Biochemist.
In 1986, Bryant Villeponteau joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School as Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry. While at Michigan, Villeponteau worked in the area of chromatin structure and gene regulation, developed gene targeting technology in human cells, and was the first to identify enhancers as activators of chromatin structure. He also cloned one of the first Senescence-Associated Genes.
In 1993, Dr. Villeponteau Joined Geron Corporation as Senior Scientist of the Molecular Biology Research Group. He helped develop telomerase inhibitor screen for cancer and used innovative cyclic-selection technique to identify the RNA component of human telomerase. This telomerase discovery made national headlines and later led to Villeponteaus receipt of the 1997 Distinguished Inventor award.
Most recently, Bryant Villeponteau served as President and Chief Scientific Officer of Carlsbad, CA, based HealthSpan Sciences and as Consultant and Scientific Advisory Board member for Sierra Sciences.
Dr. Villeponteau is an author on 41 publications, and holds 15 issued domestic patents, 15 international patents, and 5 domestic patent applications.
Dr. Greer is an Associate Professor of Genomics-bioinformatics, phylogenetics, and developmental biology at La Sierra University.