CBE & BE Seminar: “Targeting the Brain and Behavior to Probe the Dynamics of Aging” (Claire Bedbrook, Stanford University)

Bio & Abstract:

Claire Bedbrook is an engineer and neuroscientist working to extend lifespan by modulating the brain. Claire was trained in chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She completed her Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology with Professor Frances Arnold and Professor Viviana Gradinaru, where she engineered molecular tools for controlling and recording the brain using machine-learning-based protein engineering. Claire is now a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow and Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Scholar in the labs of Professor Karl Deisseroth and Professor Anne Brunet at Stanford University, where she is pioneering approaches to understand and engineer the process of aging. Studying intact systems longitudinally over life in high dimensions is a fundamental unmet need in biology. If achieved, this would uncover key principles of aging, the leading driver of most chronic diseases. However, given the long timescale of vertebrate aging, recording this continuous, lifelong transformation is highly challenging. Claire’s research seeks to overcome this challenge by leveraging the African killifish, a genetically tractable vertebrate model with a naturally compressed lifespan that recapitulates key aging features. Using the short-lived killifish, she engineered a platform to track every moment of a vertebrate animal’s life, capturing multidimensional behavioral dynamics across timescales from milliseconds to entire lifespans. This system offers an unprecedented, unbiased view into the progression of aging.