Dr. Laura Niedernhofer is the Director of the Masonic Institute on the Biology of Aging and Metabolism (MIBAM) and Medical Discovery Team on the Biology of Aging. She is also a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics at UMN. Laura received her B.S. in Chemistry from Duke University. She then went on to receive her M.S. from Georgetown University School of Medicine, an M.D./Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and postdoctoral training from Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands. 

Dr. Niedernhofer’s expertise is in DNA damage and repair, genome instability disorders, cellular senescence and aging. Her research program is centered on studying fundamental mechanisms of aging and developing therapeutics to target them, and implements a murine model of a human progeroid syndrome caused by a defect in DNA repair. Research in the Niedernhofer lab is focused on studying the biology that drives aging and seeks to identify aspects of the biology of aging that might be targeted therapeutically to stave off age-related diseases and extend healthy aging. The pillars of aging that are considered druggable include genome instability, inflammation, adaptations to stress, autophagy and proteostasis, stem cell function, nutrient sensing, epigenetics, mitochondrial function, and senescent cells.