Overview

Malene Hansen, PhD, was born and raised in Denmark and received her MSc and PhD from Copenhagen University. Starting in 2001, Dr. Hansen carried out postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Professor Cynthia Kenyon, Ph.D., at the University of California, San Francisco. She established her laboratory at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute studying molecular mechanisms of aging in the fall of 2007, and joined the Buck Institute in February 2021 as Chief Scientific Officer and faculty member.

Hansen has been recognized for her research throughout her career, including an Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar in Aging Award, a Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging, a Julie Martin Mid-Career Award in Aging Research and a Breakthrough in Gerontology Award supported by the Ellison Medical Foundation and American Association for Aging Research. Moreover, her lab is/has been funded by federal grants from both the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute for General Medical Sciences. Dr. Hansen serves as an ad hoc reviewer for multiple scientific journals and is currently chair of the National Institute’s of Health’s Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Aging study section.

Hansen has organized a number of international scientific conferences, including the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s meeting on Mechanisms of Aging from 2014-2018 and the 2020 Keystone meeting on Aging, and she is a co-chair of the 2022 Gordon Research Conference on Autophagy.