Steven N. Austad

Steven N. Austad holds the Protective Life Endowed Chair in Healthy Aging Research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is Senior Scientific Director of the New York-based American Federation for Aging Research. He is an elected fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Austad maintains a keen interest in communicating science to the lay public. In that capacity has served on the Science Advisory Board of National Public Radio and has written more than 200 popular science articles and essays for print and electronic media, and published 7 books. In his earlier life, Dr. Austad, with a degree in English literature, trained lions for the Hollywood movie industry, was a newspaper reporter, drove a taxi cab in New York City, and hustled pool nation-wide. With a PhD in evolutionary ecology, he has done field research in multiple parts of the United States, Venezuela, England, Kenya, Micronesia, and Papua New Guinea, experiences he brings to his writing.