Joao Pedro de Magalhaes joined the Ageing and Stress Group at the University of Namur in Belgium. With Olivier Toussaint as his advisor, Magalhaes’ work from 1999 to 2004 spanned molecular mechanisms of cellular senescence and responses to oxidative stress, evolutionary models of ageing, and analyses of gene networks. He then did a postdoc from 2004 to 2008 with George Church at Harvard Medical School. In this role with Church, Magalhaes helped develop high-throughput approaches for studying ageing, including computational tools and databases, statistical models of mortality, methods for cell-based RNAi screens, and comparative genomics methods for investigating the evolution of longevity. In 2008, Magalhaes joined the University of Liverpool to develop his own group on genomic approaches to ageing. The group was initially in the School of Biological Sciences (which later became the Institute of Integrative Biology), and is now in the Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease. Among his many longevity-related scientific research projects, Magalhães has sequenced and analyzed the genome of the bowhead whale. And he has also contributed to analysis of the genome of the naked mole rat. Both of these mammals are exceptionally long-lived and exceptionally cancer-resistant. Joao Pedro de Magalhaes is also an affiliate Principal Investigator in the Neuroendocrinology and Aging Group at the University of Coimbra in Portugal.