Researcher
Daniel Belsky
Last updated Sun May 17 2026 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
Background
Daniel Belsky is Associate Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia and a Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center investigator. His work uses the unique Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study — a 1972–1973 New Zealand birth cohort with intensive longitudinal phenotyping — to study aging in midlife.
Key contributions
- Pace of Aging — a midlife metric derived from longitudinal change across 19 biomarkers, capturing how fast someone is biologically aging even before disease onset.
- DunedinPoAm and DunedinPACE — DNA-methylation estimators of the Pace of Aging that can be measured from a single timepoint.
- Work using these markers to show that adverse childhood experiences, socioeconomic factors, and lifestyle imprint on biological aging trajectory.
- Application of DunedinPACE to evaluate caloric restriction (CALERIE), metformin, and other interventions.
Why DunedinPACE matters
It estimates rate of biological aging rather than cumulative biological age. A short intervention that slows the rate is plausibly detectable in a year — a meaningful contribution to designing efficient intervention trials.
Related entries
References
- Belsky, D. W. et al. DunedinPACE, a DNA methylation biomarker of the pace of aging. eLife 11, e73420 (2022).