Christy CARTER

Biography

Dr. Carter is the NIA/DAB Program Officer for Training and Workforce Development. She has served as leadership in both the Wake Forest and University of Florida OAICs as Pilot Core Director and REC investigator. More recently she has served as Research Development Core Leader of the UAB Nathan Shock Centers. Nationally she has served as the NSC representative on the RCCN steering committee and on the NSC communications committee. Dr. Carter has also led the development of online certificate and masters programs focused on gerontology that are offered nationally. As an academic, her research interests focused on preserving health-span during aging. Dr. Carter has demonstrated that the application of standardized physical performance measures to a variety of animal models of aging may help to define similarities between species in the underlying mechanisms of loss of mobility, the age-related decline in performance, cognition, disability, and longevity. She has extended this area of research to other special aging populations such as the frail and obese, and has developed combinatorial therapies. These interventions include diet, exercise, as well and nutritional and pharmaceutical approaches. Many of the pharmaceutical compounds in her laboratory modulate the renin-angiotensin system (RAS). Dr. Carter has translated these preclinical findings to humans through collaboration with clinical researchers.  She is also known for her work investigating gut microbiome in the development of age-related pathologies – with particular interest in the contributions of the gut microbiome to age-related increases in systemic inflammation and declining cognition.