S. Jay Olshansky

Stuart Jay Olshansky (born February 22, 1954) is a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago concentrating on biodemography and gerontology and is co-founder and Chief Scientist at Lapetus Solutions, Inc.

He is also a research associate at the Center on Aging (University of Chicago) and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Olshansky is an associate editor of the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences and Biogerontology and is a member of the editorial boards of several other scientific journals. Olshansky has been working with colleagues in the biological sciences to develop the modern "biodemographic paradigm" of mortality – an effort to understand the biological nature of the survival and dying out processes of living organisms. The focus of his research has been on estimates of the upper limits to human longevity, exploring the health and public policy implications associated with individual and population aging, forecasts of the size, survival, and age structure of the population, pursuit of the scientific means to slow aging in people (The Longevity Dividend), and global implications of the re-emergence of infectious and parasitic diseases, and insurance linked securities.

Olshansky has been a vocal supporter of scientific attempts increase the human healthspan. He is an advocate for prolonging the healthy life-span compared to increasing the overall length of life as such. In an interview he advocated for further study of calorie restriction, genetic study of humans centenarians, and for further study on life extension and senescence. He is co-author with Bruce A Carnes of The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging (Norton, 2001) and with Jim Kirkland and George Martin he co-edited "Aging: The Longevity Dividend", published in 2015.