Fight Aging!

A number of organizations organize yearly conferences relevant to both participants in the longevity industry and its surrounding community, and those who want to participate, whether as investors, researchers, advocates, entrepreneurs, or employees of biotech startups. Here I'll point out a few events that may be of interest to those who want to become more involved in this field. Come out to attend some of the better conferences! That is is the advice I give to most people who want to work in a longevity biotech company, start a longevity biotech company, make connections with self-experimenters and those who know more about the current state of research, or simply learn more about who is who. For another list of industry conferences, one might look to the Aging Biotech Info conference page.

August 10th, 2023: Ending Age-Related Diseases, New York City

Lifespan.io has organized a yearly conference series in NYC for some time now. This year they are trying something new, and mixing the longevity community with the blockchain community. A good number of high net worth blockchain industry folk have a strong interest in the longevity industry, and have both invested in biotech companies and funded research programs. There are also initiatives like VitaDAO that emerged from an intersection of the interest in longevity and blockchain applications, this being one of the more interesting attempts of the past twenty years to try to create a sustainable financial incentive to fund early stage research.

August 17th, 2023: Longevity Summit Dublin 2023, Dublin

The LEV Foundation, the present vehicle for the work of Aubrey de Grey since his separation from the SENS Research Foundation, hosts a yearly event in Dublin, Ireland. Like the conferences hosted by the SENS Research Foundation and Forever Healthy Foundation in past years, the summit aims to be a good mix of pushing forward on the fundamental science of rejuvenation, as well as bringing that science into the clinic.

August 28th, 2023: the 10th Aging Research and Drug Discovery Meeting, Copenhagen

ARDD is a primarily scientific conference focused on research that might lead to treatments for aging, but the event also attracts a significant number of of longevity industry entrepreneurs and investors. For industry participants, this is the mixture to seek out, as it offers the greatest chance of fortunate connections. Perhaps by virtue of continuing largely undaunted while other conferences were slow to return following COVID-19, ARDD has become one of largest and best events for that part of the longevity community that lies at the intersection of industry and academia.

September 7th, 2023: RAAD Festival, Anaheim

RAADfest remains, as in past years, a fascinating mix of scientists and alchemists, legitimate companies working on means of rejuvenation next to the frauds of the "anti-aging" industry. Go, by all means, should you feel equipped to tell the difference! At some point, working medicine that is capable of achieving a specific goal in control over the human body drives out the charms and potions. It hasn't happened yet in the matter of aging, but it will as the longevity industry advances.

September 27th, 2023: Longevity Investors Conference, Gstaad

As the title might suggest, this is a fully investor-focused conference intended to directly educate and expand the investor community focused on the longevity industry. While that investor community has certainly expanded by leaps and bounds in recent years, many more participants are needed as increasing numbers of longevity industry companies move beyond the preclinical stage of development into the very much more expensive clinical stage. The sizable funding for clinical trials of therapies capable of slowing or reversing the mechanisms of aging must come from somewhere, and educating the community of conservative investors that manage very large funds is a project in and of itself.

December 1st, 2023: Foresight Vision Weekend, Paris and San Francisco

The Foresight Institute puts on a number of events relevant to the longevity community, firstly a longevity-focused workshop earlier in the year and then a yearly gathering that covers all of the organization's areas of interest in developing technologies, including the treatment of aging as a medical condition. The crowd is typically made up of the Bay Area investment and entrepreneurial community, but it draws visitors from many parts of the longevity industry and research community. It is an excellent opportunity to make connections with people who have been at the core of the longevity industry since its inception.

December 5th, 2023: Longevity Summit, San Francisco

The Longevity Summit is a new conference series, held at the Buck Institute just north of the Bay Area. Like the other conferences I'd consider to be at the better end of the spectrum, the organizers make an effort to gather together a good mix of scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors. I didn't attend last year, but those who did spoke highly of it.

December 7th, 2023: 23rd Bay Area Aging Meeting, San Francisco

While ostensibly a meeting for the scientific community, plenty of the participating labs have given rise to longevity industry biotech companies in recent years. Still, this is probably the most wholly academic/scientific of the events in this list. If you are a scientist at an academic institution in the US, starting here might be a good plan.