George Martin

Dr. Martin has led a long and productive career at the University of Washington, where he received his BS and MD degrees and has been a member of its faculty since 1957. He worked as a surgical pathologist and cytogeneticist in the UW Department of Pathology since 1957, and he served as the founding director of the Medical Scientist Training Program and the “Genetic Approaches to Aging Research” Institutional Training Grant of the National Institute on Aging. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and now serves as a Senior Member. Dr. Martin was a member of the National Advisory Council, the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute on Aging, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Ellison Medical Foundation. He currently serves as the Scientific Director of the American Federation for Aging Research. He was the Founding Editor-in-Chief of an AAAS/Science website for research on the biology of aging (SAGE KE). Dr. Martin is a Past President of the Tissue Culture Society of America, American Federation for Aging Research and the Gerontological Society of America. Dr. Martin’s research has for many years been concerned with the development of genetic approaches to the study of aging and age-related diseases in mammals. One theme has been the plasticity of the genome of somatic cells. At a more clinical level, Dr. Martin has systematized knowledge of human genetic disorders from the point of view of their rich potential to elucidate specific aspects of the senescent phenotype and used this analysis to make inferences concerning the polygenic basis of aging.

Research Interests: Mechanisms of cellular aging; Genetic analysis of familial Alzheimer's disease; Transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer's disease pathology.