I am a biological anthropologist studying the intersection of psychosocial stress, environmental change, and biological aging in humans. I am currently a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Lea Lab at Vanderbilt University’s Department of Biological Sciences and the Sociology Department at the University of Utah. I earned my Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology with a Certificate in Demographic Methods from the University of Washington in 2022 and am external affiliate with the Center for Studies in Demography Ecology.
My research program leverages diversity within and between populations to understand how social environments (Tennyson et al., 2016), physical environments (Tennyson et al., 2018), and behavior (Tennyson, Nanda, et al., 2024) influence biological aging, connecting lived experiences to molecular, immunological, and demographic processes.
This approach often produces findings that challenge traditional biomedical predictions from White, American “reference” populations. For example, I found that higher childhood psychosocial stress is associated with having longer telomeres for more active individuals, indicating younger biological age with more stress. In contrast, the opposite was true for less active individuals. Findings like this lead my collaborators and me to challenge what we know about stress and aging, how we know it, and how diverse populations and methods can improve our understanding of human health and evolution.
My ongoing research focuses on groups both outside and within the US. Outside the US, I work with The Vietnam Health and Aging Study (VHAS) (PI’s: Zachary Zimmer, Mount Saint Vincent’s University; Kim Korinek, University of Utah; and Alan A. Cohen, Columbia University) and, more recently, I joined the Orang Asli Health and Lifeways Project (PI: Amanda Lea, Vanderbilt University). I also often collaborate with researchers on the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Study based in the Philippines. In the US, I work with NCAA student-athletes and founded the Human Biology of Stress and Sports research team (HBSS) in 2020, funded by the Center for Leadership in Athletics at UW, which has since expanded across several institutions nationwide.
I received specialized training in biological aging as a pre-doctoral trainee for the Biological Mechanisms of Healthy Aging at the University of Washington (supported by NIH/NIA T32 AG066574). I also received demographic training as a trainee with the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the UW (previously supported by NICHD T32 HD007543).