Dr. Richard Siow
Richard Siow, PhD, FRSB, FESPM, is the Director of Ageing Research at King's (ARK) and Reader (Associate Professor) in Vascular Biology in the School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine & Sciences at King's College London, Visiting Professor in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford, and Honorary Secretary General of the European Society of Preventive Medicine.
Richard has led ARK since 2016. ARK is a cross-faculty, multidisciplinary consortium at King's College London and King's Health Partners that brings together scholarship, research, innovation, and entrepreneurship in aging across the life course to understand the mechanisms of aging and improve healthspan and longevity in the community. Under his direction, ARK has built an international network of academic and industry partners:
in 2019, ARK launched an AI-for-healthy-ageing collaboration with Insilico Medicine, the AI drug-discovery company founded by our Alex Zhavoronkov; in 2021 it partnered with Muhdo Health on next-generation consumer epigenetic testing, and in 2023 it formed a strategic partnership with the European Society of Preventive Medicine to make prediction and prevention of chronic and age-related diseases a clinical reality.
Read Insilico and Ageing Research at King's announce collaboration to optimise opportunities for healthy ageing and longevity, Muhdo & ARK-KCL collaborate on consumer epigenetic tests, and ESPM and ARK aim to prevent and predict age-related diseases.
Richard convenes ARK's annual Longevity Week symposium, which he opened and closed in 2023, 2024, and 2025, and he spoke on nutrition and healthy brain ageing at the CARICE ARK Science and Networking Conference in October 2025.
The 2024 symposium marked the launch of Longevity, the official journal of the European Society of Preventive Medicine published by Taylor & Francis, of which Richard is Joint Editor-in-Chief, and where he worked with the Society's founder Michael Sagner to establish a formal affiliation between the journal and the Longevity Science Foundation. Read Event Recap: The LSF at the 6th ARK Longevity Week Symposium.
His research group in the School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine & Sciences, affiliated with the King's British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence, investigates the mechanisms of aging and healthy longevity, nutrigenomics and epigenetics, cardiovascular redox biology, and physiological oxygen in microfluidic models, with a focus on how aging alters redox signalling in cardiovascular and cerebrovascular health. He has authored more than 90 peer-reviewed publications and secured over £4 million in collaborative research funding from government, charity, and industry sources.
Read Cardioprotective effects of Cu(II)ATSM in human vascular smooth muscle cells and cardiomyocytes mediated by Nrf2 and DJ-1, The anti-ageing hormone klotho induces Nrf2-mediated antioxidant defences in human aortic smooth muscle cells, and Modification of intracellular glutathione status does not change the cardiac trapping of 64Cu(ATSM).
With our Alex Zhavoronkov and our Matt Kaeberlein and our Evelyne Bischof, he coauthored The potential of rapalogs to enhance resilience against SARS-CoV-2 infection and reduce the severity of COVID-19 in The Lancet Healthy Longevity in 2021, and with our Andrea Maier and colleagues across China, Europe, and Asia he coauthored Adapting health, economic and social policies to address population aging in China in 2025.
Since 2024, Richard has served as Industry Engagement Lead of the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in Brain Health, a £2.9 million centre hosted by South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and led by Dag Aarsland that develops technologies for the diagnosis, care, and treatment of dementia, and of the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing at King's College London. At the Centre's launch in June 2024 he chaired the keynote by Christian Angermayer.
He also leads industry partnerships for the King's College London–Unilever Innovation Hub, having developed the framework partnership between King's and Unilever that established the King's Unilever Innovation Hub, and he initiated the King's India Summer Session at Unilever Bangalore. Read New HealthTech Research Centre in Brain Health celebrates launch and Creating real-world impact for your physiology research: How knowledge exchange can help.
Richard earned his BSc in Nutrition and his PhD in Cardiovascular Physiology from King's College London, where he studied between 1990 and 1997. From 1998 to 2001, he was a Research Associate in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge, and in 2001 he joined King's as a Lecturer in Physiology, where he has since led a group in vascular biology.
From 2017 to 2019, he served as Vice-Dean (International) of the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine. At Oxford, he was Visiting Senior Academic in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics from 2023 to 2024 before being appointed Visiting Professor in 2024, and from 2021 to 2022 he was a Visiting Academic with the Healthy Longevity Innovation Cluster at the University of Zurich, where he led ARK's partnership with the cluster. Read A global perspective on consumer longevity data.
A member of The Physiological Society since 1999, he served as a Society Representative from 2005 to 2017 and became Theme Lead for Vascular and Smooth Muscle Physiology in 2008. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2012 and a Fellow of the European Society of Preventive Medicine in 2023, and he is UK Lead for the International Society on Ageing and Disease. Read Dr Richard Siow's story.
Richard holds a wide portfolio of advisory and editorial roles. Since 2020, he has sat on the International Advisory Board of The Lancet Healthy Longevity, and since 2025, he has chaired the Strategic Advisory Council of the Longevity Science Foundation, where he moderated a panel at the Longevity Science Summit '25.
From 2021 to 2024, he was Specialty Chief Editor of the Healthy Longevity section of Frontiers in Aging, alongside our Morten Scheibye-Knudsen, his fellow Specialty Chief Editor. Read Discussing the future of aging research with Specialty Chief Editors, Drs. Morten Scheibye-Knudsen and Richard Siow.
From 2022 to 2024, he chaired the Scientific Advisory Board of the Longevity Med Summit, whose inaugural meeting in Cascais, Portugal in May 2023 drew more than 200 participants from 25 countries. He edited the summit's Frontiers Research Topic and coauthored, with Natalie Falshaw and Michael Sagner, The Longevity Med Summit: insights on healthspan from cell to society. From 2019 to 2023, he was a founding academic member of the Strategic Advisory Board of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for Longevity.
He is a Science Advisor on epigenetics and biological aging to Muhdo Health since 2021 and a member of the Science Expert Panel of MitoQ since 2023. From 2020 to 2026, he was Health and Longevity Advisor to the Chief Technology Officer and Technology Division of Thailand's Charoen Pokphand Group and from 2024 to 2025 an Advisory Board Member of Aktivo Labs in Singapore.
Richard speaks regularly on healthy aging to industry audiences. Watch Unpacking the science of staying healthier, for longer and read Dr Richard Siow on measuring healthy ageing: Biomarkers, DNA methylation, and happiness from Vitafoods Insights. Listen to Consumer Longevity in the Decade of Healthy Ageing with Dr. Richard Siow on the VitaDAO podcast.
Richard lives in London, speaks English, and has working proficiency in Chinese.
Visit his LinkedIn profile, King's College London profile, Oxford DPAG profile, Google Scholar page, ResearchGate profile, ORCID record, King's Research Portal page, SciProfiles page, and Loop profile. Follow him on X.