KLRI Home > About Us > Governance > Staff > S. Mitchell Harman, MD, PhD

S. Mitchell Harman, MD, PhD

Director and President, Kronos Longevity Research Institute

S. Mitchell Harman is the Director and President of Kronos Longevity Research Institute (KLRI). He oversees all aspects of KLRI's operations, including planning, execution and reporting of research; staffing; and budget and administration. He is an internationally recognized expert on the effects of aging on hormone regulation and the use of hormone therapy in older men and women.

His career started as a Clinical Associate in the Reproduction Research Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He conducted research on ovarian physiology and trained in endocrinology. He then moved to a position as Senior Staff Fellow in 1974 at the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Aging (NIA). Dr. Harman founded the NIA laboratory for the study of aging of the male and female reproductive hormone systems.

Dr. Harman went on to join the faculty of Johns Hopkins University and was a member of the attending physician staff of, what is now, the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. From 1974 to 1999, he served as a Captain in the United States Public Health Service, and then rose to become the Chief of the Endocrinology Section in the Laboratory of Clinical Physiology (LCP). He served as acting chief of the LCP and Acting Clinical Director of the NIA for nearly two years. Dr. Harman was promoted in 1984 to Associate Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Harman is board certified in both internal medicine and endocrinology. He is the author or co-author of one book and 19 book chapters, many in major textbooks of medicine, geriatric medicine and endocrinology. He has been a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center since 2001. He is also the author or co-author of more than 90 original research papers and has presented numerous research reports at scientific meetings. Dr. Harman is also a reviewer for Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Journal of Gerontology, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, AGE (Journal of the American Aging Association), Journal of the American Geriatric Society (JAGS) and Women's Health. He holds five patents in the area of controlled release drug delivery. In 1995, he received the Louis M. Hellman Master Teacher Award from the State University of New York Health Sciences Center (SUNYHSC).

Dr. Harman attended college at Emory University, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in biology and a focus in chemistry. He attended graduate and medical school at the SUNYHSC, where he graduated with honors, including membership in Alpha Omega Alpha, and was granted a doctorate of medicine and a doctorate of philosophy in anatomy. His doctoral thesis described investigations of the changes with age in female reproductive function in a rodent model. Dr. Harman completed his residency in internal medicine at the Yale New Haven Medical Center.