Dr. Michael Kobor, the Lead of the Social Exposome Cluster has been appointed as the inagural Edwin S.H. Leong UBC Chair in Healthy Aging - A President's Excellence Chair. Dr. Kobor will build a permanent program focused on deepening understanding of the aging process and developing innovative, practical strategies to improve how people age. The program, housed within UBC’s faculty of medicine, is supported by a visionary and transformational gift of $24-million from Hong Kong businessman, philanthropist and UBC alumnus Edwin Leong.

Dr. Kobor, a professor in UBC’s department of medical genetics, is a Canada Research Chair and world-leading expert in the field of epigenetics. His research examines how social and environmental factors “get under the skin” and become biologically embedded in our genes, influencing health and wellbeing throughout a person’s life and into older age. He will bring this “society to cell” approach to the new UBC Healthy Aging  Program to further investigate the societal and molecular underpinnings of aging and age-related diseases. Dr. Kobor's work with the Social Exposome Cluster, which addresses how social and environmental factors shape our biology, health and wellbeing across the lifespan, has been key to formulating the lifecourse perspective to aging that will be a key component of the UBC Healthy Aging research program. 

Read the full announcement here: https://news.ubc.ca/2022/03/24/dr-michael-kobor-to-lead-new-ubc-researc…