Darren J. Baker BS, MS, PhD

Dr. Darren Baker received his B.S. from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities with a major in Biology and a minor in Chemistry in 2001, graduating summa cum laude from the College of Biological Sciences Honors program. He completed his master’s degree from the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in 2005 with a focus on Tumor Biology. He received his Ph.D. from Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands in Biomedical Sciences in 2008. After graduating, he was recruited to be a post-doctoral fellow in the Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging from 2008-2011. In 2010, he became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Mayo Clinic. In 2016, he became an Assistant Professor in Pediatrics at Mayo Clinic. Additionally, he has functioned as the Associate Director of the Paul F. Glenn Laboratories for Senescence Research at Mayo Clinic since 2013.

Science Magazine has selected works from Darren’s research as one of the top 10 breakthroughs in science in both 2011 and 2016. His research has contributed to 52 patents which have been licensed to Unity Biotechnology, a publicly traded company developing senolytic medicines that Mayo cofounded based on Darren’s 2011 Nature paper.

His laboratory is currently funded by the NIH, the Paul F. Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, and the Keck Foundation. He has been funded previously by the Ellison Medical Foundation, the Alzheimer’s Disease research center, the Mayo Clinic Children’s Research Center, and the Mayo Clinic benefactor-funded career development award.