AFAR in the news: AFAR selected as National Program Office for new NIA Clin-STAR Coordinating Center

Posted October 7, 2019

AFAR is pleased to announce that the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH, will be awarding nearly $4.5 million over the next five years in support of a new Clin-STAR (Clinician-Scientists Transdisciplinary Aging Research) Coordinating Center.

AFAR will serve as the Coordinating Center’s National Program Office; additionally, three Academic Resource Centers at Yale University School of Medicine; University of California, San Francisco; Johns Hopkins University comprise the Coordinating Center.

The Clin-STAR Coordinating Center will develop a multi-faceted, national platform to promote and enrich the career development, training and trans-disciplinary research of clinician-investigators across the U.S., particularly early stage investigators who are committed to careers in aging research.

The Center will build on the collective and complementary experience of four principal investigators, senior administrative leadership at AFAR, and a team that includes more than 20 clinician investigators from a diverse array of 20 academic institutions across the country.

AFAR Deputy Executive Director and Director of Grant Programs Odette van der Willik will serve as one of four Principal Investigators, along with AFAR experts:

Clin-STAR’s innovative features include an annual meeting that will abut the highly successful Beeson Annual Meeting organized by AFAR; creation of an Outreach Fund that will support an array of opportunities to build leadership skills, support career development, raise the visibility of aging research, and promote the Clin-STAR Program; a novel evaluative approach based on network science; and efforts to establish a public-private partnership through philanthropy and leveraging existing relationships.

AFAR also serves as the Coordinating Center for the NIA’s Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging. AFAR also manages, with Wake Forest University, the Research Centers Collaborative Network of the NIA.

Read a related press release on Clin-STAR here.