Stanford Center on Longevity
The Stanford Center on Longevity is redefining aging by advancing cutting-edge research, transformative education, and meaningful public engagement that unlock lifelong opportunities for growth, connection, and contribution. Through its initiatives, the Center fosters collaborations across generations, promotes equity across the lifespan, and empowers individuals and institutions alike to embrace longer lives as a powerful catalyst for social progress, economic vitality, and overall well-being.
Laura Carstensen, PhD
Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity
Laura L. Carstensen is Professor of Psychology at Stanford University where she is the Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy and founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. She and Dr. Kado have formed a close collaboration through Stanford’s Longevity Center (https://longevity.stanford.edu) that includes co-directing a course at Stanford University entitled, “Longevity.” Professor Carstensen’s research program includes theoretical and empirical study of motivational and emotional changes that occur with age and the influence such changes have on cognitive processing. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and has served on the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on an Aging Society and the National Advisory Council on Aging to National Institute on Aging. Carstensen’s awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Kleemeier Award, The Richard Kalish Award for Innovative Research and distinguished mentor awards from both the Gerontological Society of America and the American Psychological Association. She is the author of A Long Bright Future: Happiness, Health, and Financial Security in an Age of Increased Longevity. Carstensen received her B.S. from the University of Rochester and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from West Virginia University. She holds an honorary doctorate from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
David Rehkopf, ScD, MPH
Co-Director, Stanford Longevity Center
David Rehkopf is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, in the Department of Medicine in the Division of Primary Care and Population Health and in Sociology (by courtesy). He serves as the Director of the Stanford Center for Population Health Sciences and in this capacity works with faculty and trainees to make high value data available to enable them to answer their most pressing clinical and population health questions.
Professor Rehkopf is a renowned expert in the study of corporate and governmental decisions on health outcomes. Since often policy and programmatic changes can take decades to influence health, his work also includes more basic research in understanding biological signals that may act as early warning signs of systemic disease, in particular accelerated aging. With his appointments in Epidemiology and Population Health, Primary Care and Population Health, and as co-Director of the Stanford Longevity Center with Dr. Kado, they share many common research interests with the shared goals of improving health span as we age.