Impact
Ashley Webb is an Associate Professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, where her laboratory studies the transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms of brain aging and neurodegeneration. A long-standing focus is adult hippocampal neurogenesis and why neural stem cells fail to generate new neurons in the aging brain; her group has linked transcriptional and epigenetic changes in aged neural stem cells to impaired proteostasis and metabolism, and has implicated similar mechanisms in defective neurogenesis in Alzheimer's disease models. A newer line of work examines hypothalamic aging, identifying cell-type-specific and sex-specific transcriptional changes with age in a region that controls sleep, circadian rhythms, metabolism and hormone status. Her earlier work, including postdoctoral research with Anne Brunet at Stanford, showed that FoxO3 regulates neural stem cell homeostasis (Cell Stem Cell, 2009), and she co-authored a widely cited review of FOXO transcription factors as regulators of cellular quality control. Before joining the Buck in 2023 she was Associate Director of the Center on the Biology of Aging at Brown University. She co-directs the Buck's Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research, chairs an NIH aging study section, and has received a Glenn Award and an AFAR junior faculty award.
Metrics
- h-index 28 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗
Research funding
7 NIH awards · USD 4M total NIH RePORTER ↗
- Molecular mechanisms underlying the preservation of neural stem cell quiescence during aging National Institute on Aging · 2022 · USD 1M
- Molecular mechanisms underlying the preservation of neural stem cell quiescence during aging National Institute on Aging · 2025 · USD 573K
- Pioneer transcription factors in aging and neurodegeneration National Institute on Aging · 2024 · USD 569K
- Pioneer transcription factors in aging and neurodegeneration National Institute on Aging · 2025 · USD 518K
- Investigation of impaired neural stem cell activation in Alzheimer's Disease National Institute on Aging · 2025 · USD 472K