Brief Biography

Siegfried Hekimi was born in Zürich and obtained his undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Geneva. He did not immediately pursue graduate studies but instead engaged in a full-time career as a cyclist (click here to see photos), first as a member of the amateur Swiss National Team and then as a professional in various teams in Switzerland and Italy. He was selected for the World Championships four times and participated in such well known races as the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia. After this adventure he completed a PhD in Neurobiology in 1988 with Professor Michael O'Shea, again at the University of Geneva. His thesis focused on the biosynthesis of neuropeptides, which was poorly understood at the time.

It was to tackle this problem that he first developed an interest in using invertebrate models to study evolutionarily conserved processes. This approach led him to study the cardiac bodies of locusts, a pair of endocrine glands almost completely dedicated to the production of the peptidic adipokinetic hormones. He then moved to the famed Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) of the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, UK, to collaborate with Dr J.G. White as a post-doctoral fellow of the Swiss National Science Fund. It is at the LMB that Sydney Brenner developed the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as one of the premier research tools in genetics, and where Hekimi developed his interest for using 'the worm' for translational studies in the biology of aging. It is also in Cambridge that he identified the first mutants that helped to demonstrate that aging could be manipulated genetically and that inducing mild mitochondrial dysfunction could in fact slow down the aging process of animals. After three years in Cambridge, Hekimi joined the Department of Biology at McGill University.

He became a Canadian and remained at McGill where he has been a full professor since 2004. He has continued his research on the aging process, extending his reach to include mouse models of aging and of age-dependent diseases, as well as drug discovery through the medium of a spin-off company, Chronogen, which closed in 2007 when its assets were acquired by larger entities. His research at McGill University has been principally funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research and the Canadian Fund for Innovation, and also by the National Science and Engineering Council, by the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute, industrial partners, and McGill University.

He holds the Robert Archibald & Catherine Louise Campbell Chair in Developmental Biology. In 2010 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and two years later was awarded the Flavelle Medal of the RSC for outstanding contribution to biological science. He is also a science popularizer who is regularly interviewed by radio and television broadcasters and the written press to explain the significance of new findings in the field of biology of aging, including his own, for human aging and human health.