Endowed faculty positions such as professorships and chairs along with targeted research support helps the USC Leonard Davis School recruit and retain top experts as well as provide world-class resources for talented junior faculty members to help build their careers. USC Leonard Davis seeks investment to support faculty and research in the following areas:
The Arts and Healthy Aging Center (AHA Center) supports research and further insight into the interplay between artistic engagement and the aging process. The new AHA Center’s research efforts focus on assessing the advantages associated with active participation in the creation of art by older individuals; evaluating the benefits derived from engaging with the arts, such as listening to music and attending theater or art exhibitions; and examining the representation of older individuals within artistic and media portrayals. The AHA Center supports competitive research grants focused on studying the connection of art and healthy aging, Arts and Healthy Aging symposia, support for Arts and Healthy Aging Visiting Scholars and other potential public programming about the arts and healthy aging that engages students, the public, and faculty from other universities.
Asians and Asian Americans are an understudied population relative to healthy aging and longevity research. The Asian Aging and Longevity Initiative aims to unravel the genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors that determine outcomes for Asians world-wide and Asian Americans and develop novel approaches to improve them. Our scientists will collaborate with other researchers here at USC including the Ney Center for Healthspan Science, the Norris Cancer Center among others. We will employ basic science, bio-demography, and clinical trials to address this unique population’s dramatic over-representation for those affected by diseases of aging such as cancer and diabetes, and heart disease. Utilizing pioneering techniques and knowledge in the growing field of microproteins, we will leverage our unique population in Southern California and beyond for precision-focused Asian-specific drug discovery.
USC Leonard Davis provides exemplary research and outreach leadership regarding the ways aging varies between nations due to social and economic contexts, and how different policies and practices impact older adults across the globe. The school’s Global Aging Initiative examines topics such as physiological aging, health, well-being, caregiving, labor-force participation, migration, service usage, family interaction, and social integration. International collaborations involve research in areas of exceptional longevity, falls-prevention outreach in Asia, and student exchanges with other educational institutions.
Gerontology and geroscience researchers at USC Leonard Davis seek to understand the basic processes that drive aging as well as how age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and cancer occur in older adults. Groundbreaking research conducted by investigators in the school’s centers and laboratories, including the Ney Center for Healthspan Science, is transforming how these types of illnesses are approached, treated, and possibly prevented through nutrition and other interventions. This includes psychosocial, policy and outreach methods. In addition, geroscience researchers bring together studies of aging and studies of chronic disease, with the hope of understanding their complex relationship and pointing the way to novel interventions for disease, frailty, and disability.
The USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology has led the discovery and advancement of this transformative field in biology. Researchers have identified multiple new peptides that have potential therapeutic applications in a variety of diseases of aging ranging from diabetes to Alzheimer’s to frailty. Our dedicated team of scientists, led by Dean Pinchas Cohen, are advancing several of these into drug development, representing a highly promising direction for unmet medical needs of the aging population.
There is no “one size fits all” approach when it comes to growing older. By combining advances in biomedical research with demographic data gathered via large population studies on health and aging (biodemography), USC Leonard Davis faculty members can correlate a range of environmental factors—such as nutrition, physical fitness, and mental stimulation—with genetic variations to understand which lifestyle choices are most beneficial for individuals who have an elevated risk of developing a specific disease of aging.
It is estimated that in the upcoming decade, more than one trillion dollars will be spent on senior housing. In response to the need for education and research in this area, USC Leonard Davis has created a Senior Living Initiative, bringing together today’s leaders in the field of senior housing with experts in academia to examine ways to provide new approaches through research and innovative education. USC Leonard Davis has experts in architecture, palliative and hospice care, home modification, nutrition, creativity, technology, and financial gerontology who contribute immensely to the field.
A growing emphasis on developing and leveraging software, sensors and other technologies that can improve outcomes and care and have the potential to reshape where and how older adults live as they age. Members of the Leonard Davis School’s faculty collaborate with scientists from the Viterbi School of Engineering to build new technology platforms, assistive devices, and smart homes to aid the aging process in the community, in formal senior living arrangements and in daily life. This collaboration addresses technology solutions in the communication, medication management, rehabilitation, and social isolation sectors. Key research objectives include using AI and data science to decipher complexities of aging, developing technologies for older adults and developing training and educational platforms for older adults to use technologies.
Building upon USC Leonard Davis’s research infrastructure in key areas will help faculty members conduct state-of-the-art research on gerontology’s most important issues.
Gifts to strengthen and build upon USC Leonard Davis’s outreach and service programs will accelerate the translation of discoveries made at the school into innovative solutions to an array of aging challenges.
Your generosity allows us to acquire tools, advance research and attract talent but it does so much more. It sends a message that each of us at every age deserves to be happy, healthy and secure. Your investment in us makes all this possible. We can’t think of a more meaningful gift than that.
© 2025 USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.
