PROJECT SUMMARY The proposed meeting series on the Mechanisms of Aging is to be held biennially in 2020, 2022 and 2024 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Since its inception 22 years ago, this conference has arguably become the leading venue for presentation of the latest progress in aging research, which is a rapidly expanding and fast-moving research field. This conference has experienced a 27% growth of total participants since 2012, and in 2018 the number of attendees surpassed 300. National and International interest continues to increase, such that over the next six years, the expectation is that each meeting will bring together up to 350 scientists from around the world working on different aspects of the molecular genetics of aging. The meeting will provide an in-depth forum for presentation of new findings in different areas of aging research. Platform sessions in the 2020 meeting will include: Tissue maintenance/stem cells; Epigenetics; Cellular homeostasis; Metabolism; Systems biology; Neural control of aging; Senescence, DNA repair, and stress response; Small molecule interventions. Two poster sessions will also be included. The oral sessions will be chaired by leading scientists in the field and will feature a large number of short talks selected from openly submitted abstracts, which will be evaluated three months before the meeting. This is exceptional in that it promotes the development of new ideas by facilitating the presentation of late-breaking findings. Moreover, the meeting routinely accommodates a large percentage of presentations by students and postdocs, thereby fostering the next generation of young scientists and helping them promote their careers in aging research. These young researchers will also benefit from organized mentoring and career development activities, such as small-group lunches with session chairs and career dinners with senior leaders.

PROJECT NARRATIVE This biennial international conference series on the Mechanisms of Aging at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is designed to be an interdisciplinary forum that accelerates research into the biological basis of aging, which will improve treatment for age-associated diseases and reveal mechanisms of the aging process itself. The conference is unique in the aging research field because it features selected talks from influential invited speakers combined with a large number of short talks chosen by the organizers from openly submitted abstracts, which are submitted three months before the meeting. This format provides ample opportunity for presentation of cutting-edge discoveries and for broad and diverse representation of junior scientists. The research program is augmented by mentoring and career development events that target graduate students and post-doctoral researchers.