Dr. Nicholas J. Schork., an international authority on human longevity and health maintenance, has joined HonorHealth Research Institute as research director of longevity, prevention and interception.

Dr. Schork heads a laboratory that is part of the Research Institute’s newly created Center for Translational Science, and his appointment is part of a push on the part of the Institute to expand its collaborations and the realm of precision medicine possibilities; providing specific answers to individual patients with rare or difficult to treat diseases, according to a press release.

“It’s all about optimizing people’s health,” Dr. Schork said in the release.

“Disease is not like an off and on switch; one day you don’t have disease and the next day you magically do have disease. There are processes that unfold over time that contribute to disease or reflect the pathobiology behind the disease,” he said in the release. “Research focusing on interception tries to understand those processes to the point where one can intervene on them, rather than the overt manifestations of the disease.”