Stacy Drury, MD, PhD
Associate Director of the Tulane Brain Institute, Remigio Gonzalez MD Endowed Professor of Child Psychiatry, and The Chief Research Officer at Children’s Hospital New Orleans. Her own research focuses on telomere dyanamics in relation to early life adversity in infants and young children, with published studies linking early caregiving and telomere length in both humans and non-human primates.
Dr. Drury will have primary administrative, financial and reporting responsibility. Dr. Drury will be the primary point-of-contact for the TRN
Elissa Epel, PhD
Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Psychiatry, at UCSF. She is an MPI of an NIA R24 Stress Research Network, and President of Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. Her work emphasizes biomarkers of stress, including telomeres and telomerase activity, examining the interplay in naturalistic settings, under acute stress, as well as changes due to intervention effects.
Dr. Epel will primarily be responsible for processes related to pilot awards and integration with existing networks including the Stress Measurement Network which she currently directs.
Simon Verhulst, PhD
Professor of Evolutionary Biology of Aging at the Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences of the University of Groningen, Netherlands. His research focuses on senescence in a life history context, using interventions during development and in adulthood in captive and wild avian populations. He has extensive analytic experience and has designed innovative statistical models to address bias in longitudinal studies.
Dr. Verhulst will direct all unbiased statistical analyses of TRN research and direct the creation of a TRN common data model.
John McLachlan, PhD
Professor of Pharmacology and Celia Scott Weatherhead & Albert J Weatherhead III Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies at Tulane University. He has decades of experience with transdisciplinary research into environmental impacts on human health as well as with developing and managing centers and scientific programs of research, and previously served as the NIEHS Scientific Director.
Dr. McLachlan will oversee TRN activities focused on enhancing current understandings of the relation between telomere length and fixed environmental exposures.