Impact
Rozalyn Anderson studies how nutrition and metabolism connect to health and longevity, with a focus on the mechanisms behind caloric restriction (CR), reduced calorie intake without malnutrition. Her work in rhesus monkeys at the University of Wisconsin showed that CR improves survival and lowers the incidence of age-related diseases in a primate, extending findings from yeast, worms, flies and mice. Her laboratory, housed in the Geriatrics Research, Education and Clinical Center at the William S. Middleton Memorial VA Hospital, seeks the regulatory pathways recruited by CR to understand why vulnerability to cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and neurodegeneration rises with age. She began studying CR as a postdoctoral fellow with David Sinclair at Harvard Medical School and continued with Richard Weindruch in Madison, joining the UW Department of Medicine faculty in 2010 and becoming full professor in 2021. She directs the Metabolism of Aging program, is Co-Editor in Chief of the Journals of Gerontology: Biological Sciences, and is a Fellow of the American Aging Association and the Gerontological Society of America. Her honours include the AFAR Breakthroughs in Gerontology Award, a Glenn Award and the GSA Nathan Shock New Investigator Award.
Metrics
- h-index 45 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗
Research output
157 works · 11,041 citations · h-index 40 OpenAlex ↗
Selected publications
- Caloric Restriction Delays Disease Onset and Mortality in Rhesus Monkeys ↗ 2009 · 2,307 citations
- Inhibition of Silencing and Accelerated Aging by Nicotinamide, a Putative Negative Regulator of Yeast Sir2 and Human SIRT1 ↗ 2002 · 1,011 citations
- Caloric restriction improves health and survival of rhesus monkeys ↗ 2017 · 870 citations
- Nicotinamide and PNC1 govern lifespan extension by calorie restriction in Saccharomyces cerevisiae ↗ 2003 · 744 citations
- Caloric restriction reduces age-related and all-cause mortality in rhesus monkeys ↗ 2014 · 739 citations
Research funding
35 NIH awards · USD 20M total NIH RePORTER ↗
- Acetyl-CoA flux and mitochondrial adaptation: a pathogenic role in aging and AD? National Institute on Aging · 2017 · USD 4M
- Wisconsin Nathan Shock Center National Institute on Aging · 2025 · USD 1M
- Wisconsin Nathan Shock Center National Institute on Aging · 2026 · USD 1M
- Metabolism of Alzheimer’s Disease: systems and cellular networks National Institute on Aging · 2020 · USD 703K
- Reproductive Hormones in Skeletal Muscle Aging in Rhesus Monkeys National Institute on Aging · 2015 · USD 696K