Group leader, Kaare Christensen, MD, PhD, DMSc. Professor of Epidemiology 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 Center. Christensen has conducted a long series of twin studies among the elderly in order to shed light on the relative contribution of genes and environment in aging and longevity. He is engaged in interdisciplinary aging research combining methods from demography, epidemiology, medicine and genetics. Another of his longstanding research interests is “life-course epidemiology”, i.e., the study of the impact of early life conditions on later life health. He has authored or co-authored more than 350 articles since 1995 in peer-reviewed, international journals, and he has an h-index of 47. He has been member of working groups and advisory panels appointed by the US National Research Council and the National Institute on Aging, USA. He has received a number of awards for his research, among others The James Shields Memorial Award for Twin Research in Behavioural Genetics, in 2010. In 2011, he was awarded the cross of the Order of the Dannebrog for his research into twins. He is a much sought-after lecturer and has given over 250 invited lectures all over the world.
Expertise: Twin studies Genetic epidemiology Development and aging Life-course epidemiology
Role in the project: PI for partner 28, oversees the project and analyses, WP14, WP15, WP16
E-mail: uiversen@health.sdu.dk
Websites: http://www.sdu.dk/en/
