Runs a research group studying the basic biology of aging and age-related disease. Team has made seminal discoveries including the identification of small molecules that slow aging.

Lithgow received his PhD in Genetics from the University of Glasgow, Scotland.  He completed postdoctoral training at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  Lithgow was a Senior Lecturer in Molecular Gerontology at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester in England before coming to the Buck Institute in 2001.  He is the Principal Investigator and Director of the Buck Institute’s Interdisciplinary Research Consortium on Geroscience. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Larry L. Hillblom Network on the Chemical Biology of Aging, and is the Coordinator of the Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging Support Award.