Impact
Daniel Belsky is an epidemiologist at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health who develops methods to measure the pace and progress of biological ageing in humans and applies them in epidemiological studies and clinical trials. With Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi he originated the Pace of Aging method, which quantifies ageing from longitudinal analysis of physiology (published in PNAS), and later translated it into a DNA-methylation blood test, the DunedinPACE epigenetic clock, that can be applied to a single time point. He leads NIH-funded projects testing how caloric restriction affects ageing-related genomic changes in the CALERIE trial, the long-term effects of prenatal famine exposure in the Dutch Hunger Winter Family Study, and whether anti-poverty policy can slow biological ageing. His work also addresses how social and life-history factors shape healthy ageing and inequalities in ageing outcomes. He directs the Geroscience Computational Core of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center, co-directs the AFAR FAST Initiative, and serves on scientific advisory boards of AFAR, the Biomarkers of Aging Consortium and XPRIZE Healthspan. He has been named an ISI Highly Cited Researcher since 2020 and received AFAR's Vincent Cristofalo Rising Star Award.
Metrics
- h-index 81 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗
Research output
364 works · 26,936 citations · h-index 73 OpenAlex ↗
Selected publications
- A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety ↗ 2011 · 4,919 citations
- The p Factor ↗ 2013 · 2,531 citations
- Quantification of biological aging in young adults ↗ 2015 · 1,059 citations
- Lest we forget: comparing retrospective and prospective assessments of adverse childhood experiences in the prediction of adult health ↗ 2016 · 852 citations
- Social determinants of health and survival in humans and other animals ↗ 2020 · 716 citations
Research funding
31 NIH awards · USD 13M total NIH RePORTER ↗
- Testing effects of cash transfers on biological aging and risk for Alzheimer's Disease National Institute on Aging · 2024 · USD 677K
- Long-term multi-omics follow-up of the CALERIE Trial to generate new knowledge for geroscience National Institute on Aging · 2026 · USD 669K
- Genomic Analysis of the CALERIE Trial to Generate New Knowledge for Geroscience National Institute on Aging · 2019 · USD 648K
- The MyGoals for Healthy Aging Multi-Center Randomized Controlled Trial National Institute on Aging · 2022 · USD 599K
- The MyGoals for Healthy Aging Multi-Center Randomized Controlled Trial National Institute on Aging · 2023 · USD 593K