December 18, 2014 | News

Congratulations!

Annette Baudisch, Tomasz Wrycza, Trifon Missov (from left to right) © Roland Rau

On December 17, MPIDR-researcher Tomasz F. Wrycza has successfully defended his PhD with magna cum laude at the University of Rostock. His doctoral work provides the mathematical foundations for an approach to aging that is still new.

Until recently, it was believed that creatures that live long must do so because they show little signs of physical aging. For why else should they have escaped death for such a long time? In 2011, however, that line of logic was disproved by former MPIDR-researcher Annette Baudisch. Some long-living animal species, in fact, show stronger signs of deterioration than species that die earlier.  Baudisch thus has called for a new definition of aging that includes two dimensions, the pace of aging and the shape of aging.

Tomasz Wrycza has now developed the mathematical basis for this concept. His PhD inter alia addressed the question of how to mathematically disentangle the two components of “pace” and “path” so that they can be measured by demographic parameters.

His work provides biodemographers with an all-important tool: The mathematical method enables them to analyze data of whole animal and plant populations and thus to gain an overview of aging patterns specific to species.