Visitors contemplate a monumental carved mural of care, scholarship and exploration, woven through wooden branches in a sunlit mountain gallery.

Impact

We back people working on longevity so aging no longer cuts human lives short. Imagine having time to make more than one life’s work, and to walk through forests you planted yourself.

What we mean by progress

For us, progress means gaining control over aging, so we can keep adding healthy years to human life. We give the world’s best talent, at any career stage, the resources to pursue ideas that would otherwise not happen, but whose impact could compound and change the entire field.

$34M behind big-if-true ideas in aging

Impetus Grants funds projects that conventional funders overlook. With decisions in ≤3 weeks and just 1.1% overhead, the lowest among the grantmakers we compared, we fund more science per dollar, faster.

240+
Impetus-supported publications
3
Randomized clinical trials supported
~60%
Of assessed Impetus-supported papers had no NIA support identified
63%
Of grantees were early career researchers

Testing a treatment for ovarian aging

Impetus funded VIBRANT at Columbia, a randomized trial testing whether low-dose rapamycin can slow ovarian aging and preserve ovarian reserve. The trial was led by Zev Williams and Yousin Suh. The first study enrolled 50 women, and outcomes supported recruiting a larger cohort.

From $163K to new biotechs raising $16M+

Alumni of our Longevity Apprenticeship founded companies developing epigenetic medicines for age-related diseases, AI models of mammalian development and AI-supported chronic disease care. Alumni also helped launch and now run Impetus Grants, and work in venture capital backing early-stage longevity biotechs.

Bringing the world’s best into aging

Longevity is still a small field. Bringing in one exceptional researcher can have a disproportionate impact on how quickly we learn to add healthy years to life.

More than 35% of Impetus’s round three grantees were new to aging research. We’ve helped researchers such as Christina Theodoris, Jonathan Weissman, and Ryan Dhindsa bring their expertise in AI, functional genomics, and human genetics into aging. Others, like Sophia Liu, were able to launch new labs focused on aging. Through Talent Bridge, we’ve brought exceptional people from around the world into US longevity research, with funding, relocation support and mentorship.

Talent Bridge ↗
Drawn portrait of Jesse Engreitz
Jesse EngreitzImpetus GrantsCRISPR screens for aging
Drawn portrait of Christina Theodoris
Christina TheodorisImpetus GrantsAI for age-related fibrosis
Drawn portrait of Ryan Dhindsa
Ryan DhindsaImpetus GrantsGenetic resilience to aging
Drawn portrait of Sophia Liu
Sophia LiuImpetus GrantsMapping the aging thymus
Drawn portrait of Nicolas Di Leo
Nicolas Di LeoTalent BridgemTOR drug discovery
Drawn portrait of Marton Meszaros
Marton MeszarosTalent BridgeData for aging biomarkers

Hear from the people

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Impetus has consistently funded our novel biomolecular tools at conceptualization/fledgling stages, too preliminary for even the ‘exploratory’ NIH grants to support.

Xiaojing GaoProfessor, Stanford University

Me and my colleague were only junior postdocs when we received the grant. It allowed us to transition full time into longevity research (instead of it being a side-activity), making preclinical and clinical trials of geroprotective compounds our sole research focus. I think it is fair to say, without exaggeration, that the Impetus funds lay the foundation for our lab and its entire research agenda today.

Pontus Plavén-SigrayERAP trial group - Karolinska Institutet

Impetus funding allowed us to pursue a high-risk, high-reward idea at a critical moment, before traditional funders like NIH would have supported it. That early support directly enabled the development of our aging biomarker platform, now used in both clinical and research settings.

Raghav SehgalResearcher, Yale University

When our secretome project was still too risky for traditional funding, Impetus Grants stood out as a uniquely fast and significant funding opportunity. Impetus’ support specifically enabled us to hire a dedicated technician and more quickly achieve proof-of-concept for a new research method.

Josh TyckoPost-Doc, Harvard Medical School & BIDMC

Starting my lab with limited funds, Impetus gave me the freedom to take risks and explore new ideas outside my comfort zone. It helped me grow my skills, attract additional funding, and broaden my perspective, leading to exciting collaborations and fresh research directions.

Federico PietrocolaResearcher, Cellular Stress in Health and Disease Lab - Karolinska Institutet

The Impetus grant played a key role in advancing my research. It provided essential support for generating preliminary data that laid the groundwork for future successful grant applications. It thus enabled us to launch a new line of research in my lab. The entire process—from application to funding—was seamless, allowing us to start the project without delay.

Eliisa KekäläinenProfessor, University of Helsinki

Impetus’ support enabled my lab to launch a brand-new research program exploring just how far we can extend lifespan in C. elegans. I love how the straightforward, concise application is so well suited for projects that pioneer new directions.

Javier ApfeldProfessor, Northeastern University

The Impetus grant made a real difference. While aging research is the main focus of our lab, the grant encouraged us to rethink our approaches and pursue high-risk, high-reward ideas that traditional funders would not support. What I truly appreciate is that Impetus is willing to back innovative ideas, even without extensive preliminary data–something that’s often required by other agencies, yet hard to generate without funding in the first place.

Another important aspect is that Impetus supports projects based on the strength of the idea, regardless of whether the applicant is a PI or a trainee. This made a significant difference to a PhD student in my lab, whose career and motivation were meaningfully boosted by this opportunity.

Dr. David VilchezProfessor, CECAD Research Center - University of Cologne

As a new Principal Investigator, the funding we received from Impetus has really been game changing. The fast turnaround on review time allowed me to quickly expand my brand-new research team. The ‘bold ideas’ approach funded by Impetus allowed us to be more daring than we can afford to be in traditional grants. Perhaps most importantly, the value Impetus places on projects and ideas - rather than CVs and seniority - allowed me to have access to an unparalleled opportunity as a new PI.

This grant, as its name promises, has truly been an ‘impetus’ for my new research group. I am very grateful for the opportunity and support, and looking forward to the results we will obtain.

Marta KovatchevaResearcher, Laboratory of Cell Plasticity & Aging, IFOM

The grant for me was a perfect opportunity for two (connected) reasons: 1. Australian funding schemes do not recognise ageing research as a field in the same way that most of the rest of the world do, so it was extremely important for my research program to get Impetus funding 2. We had an idea based on preliminary data that pointed to a new longevity intervention. An idea at the stage of research we were at would not have been funded through conventional channels.

It turned out that our hypothesis was correct and so from a fairly preliminary starting position, we accelerated from idea to realization because of Impetus money. This story was published in the dedicated special issue of Geroscience last year and has already been accessed ~7000 times and cited 11 times.

Matthew PiperProfessor, Monash University

Although redox imbalance is implicated in all hallmarks of aging, our lab recognizes that its underlying causes remain understudied in the aging field. The funding we received from Impetus Grants was instrumental in supporting our development of reagents to directly test how modulation of cellular redox state - linked to redox coenzymes NAD and NADP - can be harnessed to better understand its role on health- and lifespan.

We pursued this work in Drosophila as part of a collaboration with the Parkhitko lab at the University of Pittsburgh.

To this day, I remember the joy of receiving the Impetus Grant after unsuccessfully trying to secure funding from AFAR for the same exact project. The generous support allowed us to directly test how modulation of redox state using genetically encoded tools or small molecule redox-cyclers (alone or in combination with known ‘NAD boosters’) promotes stress-resistance and sex-dependent changes in health- and lifespan.

We are confident that in the coming years, our lab will demonstrate multiple examples showing that “fixing” redox imbalance is a more effective strategy to attack aging compared to just “boosting total NAD levels”, which can even be harmful in certain circumstances. These insights would have not been possible without funding from Impetus Grants.

Valentin CracanProfessor, Scintillon Research Institute

We are an early stage lab proposing an ambitious idea: to learn how torpor and hibernation affect aging. We had no funding for this research and the Impetus grant allowed us to begin pursuing these questions.

Sinisa HrvatinProfessor, MIT & Whitehead Institute

Impetus funding provided key bridge support for maintaining our Spiny Mice (Acomys) colony, a non-traditional experimentally tractable mammalian regenerative model system meeting new and changing NIH policies. Impetus encouraged us to pursue a topic deemed too complex via traditional routes.

Without Impetus support, we would not have successfully discovered new beneficial aging linked neuroimmune healthspan adaptations in Acomys that could be used to relandscape human aging outcomes for increased healthspans. Impetus provided our breakthrough and hopefully can continue to incentivize this type of research, pioneering novel funding mechanisms to uncover naturally selected biological solutions for promoting human health and longevity.

Branden NelsonResearcher, Seattle Children’s Research Institute

Impetus is the best grant program for aging. It found and funded the right people to shift them to aging. I see Impetus all over the place in interesting work, almost never see Hevolution even though they have more money.

Sophia LiuResearcher, Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard
Lauren NamNexus
Sophia LiuImpetus Grants awardee
Madison UelandLongevity Apprenticeship
Marton MeszarosTalent Bridge
Ryan LuImpetus Grants applicant
Satvik DasarirajuNexus

Full program record

Longevity Apprenticeship (2021)

Date: 2021

Funding amount: $163K

Operational spend: <0.1%

Outcomes

  • Alumni founded General Control, Becoming and Coherence Health. Alumni-founded biotechs raised $16M+.
  • Alumni helped launch and now run Impetus Grants, and work in venture capital backing early-stage longevity biotechs.
  • Produced the Major Papers in Aging curriculum, now used by Longevity Biotech Fellowship, and an overview of age-related diseases for longevity startups.
  • An unofficial ARPA-H recruiting campaign contacted around 100 candidates, spoke with 47 and arranged calls for 11. Two joined as program managers, launching PROSPR and FRONT.

Donors: Astera Institute, The Michael Antonov Foundation

Apprenticeship and curriculum ↗ Overview of age-related diseases ↗
Nexus (2024–ongoing)

Date: 2024–ongoing

Funding amount: $0

Outcomes

  • 25+ people attended weekly calls on aging research and how to contribute to the field.
  • Produced the Clock Assessment Program (CAP) proposal and AAV Gene Therapy for Common Diseases.
Clock Assessment Program proposal ↗ Gene Therapy for Common Diseases ↗ Nexus on the People page ↗
Impetus Grants (rounds 1–3)

Date: 2021–2023

Funding deployed: $34M

Operational spend: 1.1%

Outcomes

  • 146 projects funded across three rounds.
  • 240+ Impetus-supported publications, spanning aging clocks, immunotherapies and clinical trials.
  • Three randomized clinical trials supported.
  • 40+ labs with no prior aging research launched projects. Several continued after Impetus funding.
  • Two companies spun out of work related to funded projects.

Donors, rounds 1 & 2: Hevolution Foundation, Rosenkranz Foundation, Juan Benet, Michael Antonov, Vitalik Buterin, James Fickel, Jed McCaleb, Karl Pfleger, Fred Ehrsam, Molly Mackinlay, Feruell, Gitcoin

Donors, round 3: Rosenkranz Foundation, Hevolution Foundation

Impetus Grants ↗ All Impetus awardees ↗
Talent Bridge (2021–ongoing)

Original model

Date: 2021

Reported funding: $425K

Operational spend: <$100K

Revised model

Date: 2025–ongoing

Reported funding: $250K

Operational spend: $0

Outcomes

  • Supported Nicolas Di Leo’s mTOR drug-discovery work and Marton Meszaros’s aging-biomarker work in the US.
  • Developed a feasible visa model and shared it with multiple research nonprofits.

What changed

  • The original financial model did not work. The program was reworked in 2025 around awards and project funding, while retaining its focus on bringing exceptional people into US longevity research.

Donors, original model: Schmidt Futures, Emergent Ventures, James Fickel, Karl Pfleger, Sonia Arrison

Donors, revised model: Schmidt Futures, James Fickel, Karl Pfleger, Sonia Arrison

Talent Bridge on the People page ↗ Talent Bridge awardees and projects ↗
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