Staying healthier for longer

Imperial's new research initiative aims to speed-up multidisciplinary collaborations for reducing the gap between our lifespan and health span - News

Thursday 4 March
By Natasha Martineau

Imperial researchers are being invited to establish new collaborations to tackle the challenges posed by an expanding ageing population, as part of the College's new Lifelong Health Project.

The initiative has been set up to create a multidisciplinary community of researchers working on ways for helping us stay healthier for longer. It welcomes members of Imperial's Faculties of Engineering, Medicine and Natural Sciences and the Business School working in the field of ageing research, as well as anyone with other skills that could also be applied to solving age-related problems in a novel way.

"Ageing has become a high profile issue in all walks of life. Good solutions are going to require input from research across the board," explains Professor Maggie Dallman, Principal of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, and one of the champions behind the Lifelong Health Project.

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The project has classified Imperial research into ageing into three main strands:

• approaches for addressing the social and economic consequences of an ageing population;
• ways of understanding the medical and biological mechanisms and effects of getting older, and better ways of ageing more healthily;
• technologies, both for understanding ageing, and for helping people lead safe and independent lives for longer.

Watch the video (above) to find out more from Professor Dallman about the project, which also features in the 4th March edition of Reporter (issue 216).