Dario Valenzano is a professor at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena (Germany) and a Senior Group Leader at the Leibniz Institute on Aging (Fritz-Lipmann Institute), where he coordinate the research focus on Microbiome and Aging.

He is an evolutionary biologist and he studies why we age.

In his group they investigate how evolution shapes life history traits across species in nature. They apply an evolutionary and ecological perspective to the study of host-microbiome interactions in the context of health, disease and aging. Their work is at the confluence of evolutionary theory, ecology, genomics and animal physiology. They employ statistical modelling, experimental biology and field work to answer open questions and help develop interventions to improve biomedical resilience.