Luigi Fontana is an internationally recognized physician scientist and one of the world’s leaders in the field of nutrition, metabolism and healthy longevity in humans. His pioneering studies on the effects of dietary restriction in humans have opened a new area of nutrition-related research that holds tremendous promise for the prevention of age-related chronic diseases and for the understanding of the biology of human aging.

Professor Fontana is the Leonard P. Ullmann Chair of Translational Metabolic Health at the Charles Perkins Centre, where he directs the Charles Perkins Centre Royal Prince Alfred Clinic and the Health for Life Research, Clinical & Educational Program. He is also a Professor of Medicine and Nutrition in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney and a Clinical Academic in the Department of Endocrinology at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

Professor Fontana was a Senior Scientist at the Italian NIH (ISS) and a Professor of Medicine and Nutritional Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis (USA), and co-director of the Longevity Research Program at Washington University. Fontana graduated with highest honors from the Verona University Medical School (1994), where he completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine (1999). He also received a Ph.D. in Metabolism and Clinical Pharmacology from the University of Padua Medical School (2003).

Professor Fontana has published over 150 manuscripts in prestigious journals including Science, Cell, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, BMJ, CA Clinical Journal Cancer, Nature Reviews Mol Cell Biol, Cell Metabolism, Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol, Circulation, Journal American College of Cardiology, and PNAS; 96.4% of his papers are in the top 10% most-cited journals (Google Scholar total citations 33,792; h-index 81). He has been invited to present his work at international conferences and top medical schools and research institutes around the world, including Harvard University, Cambridge University, Yale University, Universitè Paris “Pierre et Marie Curie,” Max Planck Institute of Aging, Baylor College of Medicine, Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, and the National University of Singapore, among others.

Dr. Fontana is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the 2009 American Federation Aging Research (AFAR) Breakthroughs in Gerontology Award, the 2011 Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging, the 2016 Vincent Cristofalo Award of the American Federation Aging Research, the 2021 Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence of the University of Sydney, 2022 Honorary Member of the Italian Association of Hospital Gastroenterologists, 2022 Ordinary Non-resident Member of the Italian Academy of Medical and Surgical Sciences of the National Society of Sciences in Naples, and 2023 Ordinary Non-resident Member of the Italian Pontanian Academy of Naples (founded in 1458). He was a Scientific Member of the Board of Directors of the American Aging Association (2014–2019), and since 2016, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of Nutrition and Healthy Aging and Associate Editor of Geroscience.

Professor Fontana believes that the time has come for a change in the conversation about chronic disease to a refreshed and repurposed model of health care, which emphasizes the power of mechanism-based prevention and education to change potential to actual outcomes.

Fontana is also an environmentalist. He wrote several highly-cited perspective articles and book chapters with Daniel Kammen, Walter Willett, and Nicoletta Batini on the beneficial role of efficient use of energy and food in promoting human, environmental, and planetary health, and sustainable economic development. Fontana and colleagues believe that it is possible to substantially enhance human and environmental health, societal wealth, and well-being, but this requires a profound transformation in the way we live, and a new prevention- and environment-centered healthcare, agricultural, industrial, and economic system.

They argue that most of the knowledge and technology to transform the world and begin a new industrial revolution already exist today. We only need to relinquish the idea of producing more energy, food, and other products at lower cost in favor of a new paradigm that opts for less but high-quality energy, food, and materials for a healthier life and environment.

They also claim that “both individual and societal wealth, happiness, and well-being do not depend merely on the acquisition of material goods and on economic growth, but are powered by our physical and psychological health, the quality of life and the richness of our social relationships, and foremost by the health of the environment that supports all life on earth, our Natural Capital that must be preserved.”