Thomas T. Perls, MD, MPH
In 1995, Tom Perls MD, MPH began and continues to direct the longest running and largest study of centenarians, their siblings and offspring in the world, the New England Centenarian Study. This study also includes over 600 semi-supercentenarians (ages 105-109 years) and 200 supercentenarians (ages 110-119 years). He is multiple principal investigator of four NIH funded studies researching exceptional longevity (EL). Areas of investigation include multiple omics signatures of human exceptional longevity, resilience and resistance to Alzheimer’s disease in centenarian cognitive superagers, cancer, the microbiome and familial clustering for EL. Tom is Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. He received his Geriatrics training at both Mount Royal Hospital in Melbourne, Australia and at Harvard Medical School and he obtained his Masters in Public Health at Harvard. He is a senior physician in Geriatrics and cares for patients at Boston Medical Center and several nursing homes and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, The American Geriatrics Society and the Gerontological Society of America.