Brief Statement of Research Interests
Leonid Gavrilov (gavrilov@aol.com)
My research interests in a broad sense are: (1) to understand the mechanisms of aging and longevity, and (2) to find ways for extension of healthy and productive human lifespan.
Within this general idea in mind, and in collaboration with Dr. Natalia Gavrilova, I reanalyzed the existing approaches to the aging problem, and came to a number of specific research goals described in our book (Gavrilov, Gavrilova, 1991) and our later publications (Gavrilov, Gavrilova, 2001a; b). These specific research goals are based on one general idea that deep insights into the nature of aging process could be obtained through innovative methods of quantitative analysis of lifespan and survival data (available from epidemiological, genealogical, and demographic studies).
One particularly interesting scientific idea, which we would like to elaborate further and to test, is that early developmental events are important for late-life health outcomes, including human longevity. We came to this idea, while developing a new reliability theory of aging, which states that ‘normal’ organisms are born with enormous amount of initial damage (Gavrilov, Gavrilova, 2001b).
