Stakeholder workshop 1

Dr Alan Walker is Professor of Social Policy and Social Gerontology at the University of Sheffield, UK. He has been researching and writing on aspects of ageing and social policy for over 30 years. He is currently Director of the New Dynamics of Ageing Programme funded by the AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC and MRC, and of the European Research Area in Ageing.

Previously he directed the UK Growing Older Programme and the European Forum on Population Ageing.

He also chaired the European Observatory on Ageing and Older People.

He has published more than 20 books, 200 reports and 300 scientific papers. Recent books include Growing Older - Extending Quality Life (2004), Growing Older in Europe (2004) and Understanding Quality of Life in Old Age (2005) all published by McGraw Hill and Quality of Life in Old Age (2007), published by Springer.

In 2007 he was given Lifetime Achievement Awards by both the Social Policy Association and the British Society of Gerontology.

Stathis Gonos was born in Athens in 1963. He graduated from the Department of Pharmacy, University of Athens, Greece in 1984 and he obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Glasgow, G. Britain in 1989. From 1989 to 1993 he worked as a Research Scientist at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in London, G. Britain. Since 1994 he has been the group leader - Director of Research since 2002 - of the Programme “Molecular and Cellular Ageing” in NHRF/IBRB. The research activities of the Programme are focused on the genetic and environmental factors that are linked to human ageing and longevity and are financed by competitive grants awarded by the European Union (9 grants), the Hellenic General Secretariat of Research & Technology as well as by private sources (total awarded budget over 5,000,000 euros).

He has published 77 research articles in eminent journals having more than 1,500 citations (H-index 21), is author of 14 monographs and patents holder that have resulted in the development of novel anti-ageing products.

He has been invited to give lectures at 65 international Conferences (Gordon Conferences, UNESCO, FEBS, European Congress of Gerontology, EMBO, IUBMB, EuroConference, European Association of Cancer Research etc), has been co-organizing the EMBO/FEBS Spetses Summer Schools since 1999 and has organized the 2nd EuroConference on “Biological Ageing”, the 12th International Association of Biomedical Gerontology Congress and the 59th Conference of the Hellenic Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Dr. Gonos has received fellowships from the University of Glasgow, the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the Royal Society of G. Britain and was honored with the “Hans Selye” award. He teaches in the post-graduate courses of Hellenic Universities and he is/has been co-supervisor of 14 Ph.D. theses.

He has been a “Senior expert” of E.U. in “Human development and the ageing process” and Deputy National Representative of Greece in E.U. in “Genomics and Biotechnology for Health”. He is evaluator of several international organizations (European Union, UNESCO, Cancer Research U.K., Medical Research Council U.K., Austrian Science Fund, Italian Association for Cancer Research, Spanish Ministry of Health, Association for International Cancer Research etc), member of the Executive Committee of International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB), member of the Advanced Course Committee of Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS), member of the Board of Directors of the “Society of Free Radicals Research-Europe”, President of the “Hellenic Society of Free Radicals”, Associate Editor of “Mechanisms of Ageing & Development” and Editorial Board member of “Molecular Aspects of Medicine”, “Experimental Gerontology”, “Aging Cell” (2002-2007) and “Biogerontology” (2001-2009).

Giovanni Lamura graduated in Economics at the Ancona University (Italy) in 1990, and obtained his PhD degree in "Life course and social policy" at the University of Bremen (Germany) in 1995.

Since then he has been working at the Department of Gerontological Research of the Italian National Research Centre on Ageing (INRCA), where he has gained experience in international research projects in following fields: family care of the elderly; reconciliation of professional and caring responsibilities; migrant care workers; quality of life and well-being in older age; prevention of elder abuse and neglect; long term care; older workers.

In July 2006 – September 2007 he was visiting researcher for one year at the University of Hamburg-Eppendorf, Institute of Medical Sociology, Hamburg (Germany), to work on data collected within the EUROFAMCARE project on “Supporting services for family carers of older people in Europe”.

Besides FUTURAGE, currently he is involved in following cross-national research projects: “ABUEL: a multinational prevalence study on elder abuse”; “ASPA” (Activating Senior Potential in an Ageing Europe); “Care@work” (on the reconciliation of employment and elder care, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation); and “EURHOMAP” (aimed at mapping home care services in Europe).

Hans-Werner Wahl received his PhD in psychology from the Free University of Berlin in 1989 and was from 1997 to 2005 Professor of Social and Environmental Gerontology and chair of the Department of Social and Environmental Gerontology at the German Centre for Research on Ageing at Heidelberg University, Germany.

Since 2006, he has been Professor of Psychological Aging Research at the Institute of Psychology, Heidelberg University, Germany. His research activities include the understanding of the role of physical-technological environments for ageing well, adaptational processes in the context of age-related chronic functional loss, processes of awareness of ageing in a lifespan perspective and intervention research.

Hans-Werner is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 scholarly journal articles and chapters related to the study of human aging. He is co-editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Ageing and a member of the editorial board of The Gerontologist. Dr. Wahl is also a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) and has received the 2008 Social Gerontology Award and the 2009 M. Powell Lawton Award of the GSA.

Carol Jagger is the AXA Professor of Epidemiology of Ageing at the Institute for Ageing and Health, Newcastle University. Her research crosses the interface between demography and epidemiology of ageing with a particular focus on healthy active life expectancy.

Within Europe she was Deputy Chair of the EC Task Force for Health Expectancy and she is a member of the Steering Group of the European Health Survey System and the Task Force on survey based disability statistics.

Nationally she has provided evidence on healthy life expectancy to the UK Works and Pensions Committee for its enquiry into Pension Reform and the Health Committee for its Social Care Review.

Current projects include: two major longitudinal studies of ageing - the MRC Newcastle 85+ Study and the MRC Cognitive Function and Ageing Study (MRC CFAS); Modelling Ageing Populations to 2030 (MAP2030) forecasting the future burden of disability through changing patterns of disease; and the European Health and Life Expectancy Information System monitoring inequalities in Healthy Life Years across Europe.

Carol holds a visiting Chair in Epidemiology of Ageing at Keele University and a visiting Fellowship in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Cambridge University.

Professor Goodwin is the recently appointed Head of Research in the newly merged charity, Age Concern and Help the Aged. The mission of the new charity, the largest in the UK, is to improve the lives of older people.

He holds a visiting professorship at Loughborough University in the Department of Human Sciences. He is a member of the advisory board of the journal ‘Ageing Horizons’ at Oxford University and a member of the editorial board of ‘Quality in Ageing’. He sits on numerous expert bodies, including the UN Research Agenda for Ageing panel, the UN Digital Health Group, a WHO Advisory Group, scientific advisory panels of the research councils and is Chair of the Halcyon Knowledge Transfer Steering Committee at UCL.

Dr Goodwin graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Keele University, UK. After graduation he read for a Master’s in Human Physiology at Loughborough University and then for a PhD in climatic physiology at the Postgraduate Medical School, University of Exeter. His research area was the effects of temperature variations on the autonomic cardiovascular responses of older people, an area highly relevant to the issue of climate change and older people’s health.

After 15 years in the university sector he was appointed as Head of Research at the Help the Aged in 2002.

His other area of expertise is knowledge transfer, sitting on the advisory Board of KT-EQUAL, as a panel member of the LLHW Programme and as an adviser to Imperial College on their age-related research in the Faculty of Engineering.

Professor of Epidemiology at the Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, and Senior Research Scientist at the Terry Sanford Institute, Duke University, North Carolina, USA.

Christensen is the Director of the Danish Twin Registry and the Danish Aging Research Centre and he has conducted a long series of studies among twins and the oldest-old in order to shed light on the importance of genes and environment in aging and longevity. He has a longstanding interest in the relation between early life events and later life health outcome.

Christenson is engaged in interdisciplinary aging research combining methods from epidemiology, genetics and demography. He has authored or co-authored some 300+ publications and has 38 publications that have been cited at least 38 times (Science Citation Index). Among Christensten’s publications are 9 papers in British Medical Journal, 4 in Lancet, 3 in New England Journal of Medicine, 2 in Science as well as papers in PNAS, Nature Genetics, and Nature Reviews Genetics.

Peteris Zilgalvis is Head of the Governance and Ethics Unit, Directorate Science, Economy and Society at DG Research, European Commission, Brussels. Until 2005, he was Deputy Head of the Bioethics Department of the Council of Europe, in its Directorate General of Legal Affairs. In addition, he has held various positions in the Latvian civil service (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Environment) and at the World Bank in Moscow and Riga.

Zilgalvis studied political science (cum laude) at the University of California, Los Angeles. At the Law Center of the University of Southern California he obtained his JD (Doctor of Jurisprudence). He is a member of the California State Bar. He has published over 25 publications on bioethics, economic reform and environmental law in English and in Latvian.

Inês Guerreiro is currently the National Coordinator of National Network Integrated Continuous Care (RNCCI) at the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Labour and Social Solidarity of Portugal (since 2006).

Formerly a Representative of the Ministry of Health for the Committee of Social Protection of the European Union, advisor to the Minister of Health for Continuous Care, Advisor of the Regional Secretary of Social Affairs for the creation of the RRCCI and the Head of a National Program for Palliative Care.She is also the Manager of a Pilot-Project in Performance Budgeting of the Ministry of Health – coordinated by GTIPOP (Task force for the Implementation of Performance Budgeting) of the Ministry of Finance. She received a BA in Social and Political Sciences in 1974 from Lisbon Technical University and has undertaken post-graduation education in France and the USA in project management and organization.