Employee Directory

Let's in a small town called Comfort nestled off Interstate-10 in the Texas Hill Country. Less than 100 kids per grade. The type of town where it was a big deal when we got our first traffic light, which happened after I left home to study at our one and only Texas A&M University. As an undergraduate in the Department of Biochemistry, I conducted research on the carbon metabolism pathways (squalene & capsidiol) underlying tomatoes' response to fungal pathogens. At the same time, I expanded my horizons with co-curricular experiences, including spending one summer as a door-to-door salesperson with Southwestern Advantage and subsequently joining the student organization CARPOOL, in which I served in for 3 years, eventually as internal vice chair of the at-the-time 250+ member organization. These experiences generated a newfound humanitarianism in me; while I loved my bench science, my research lacked that distinctly human connection. So, I pivoted and enrolled in the SAAHE Master’s program, the degrees held by many of our exceptional staff in Student Affairs. This program taught me how to be a professional in higher education, introducing the logistics of educational administration. Even so, I missed the draw of a well-designed experiment. I was able to reconcile these desires with the Biobehavioral Health PhD program at Penn State University, which adopts a bench to bedside approach to the study of human health. Our faculty spanned molecular biologists working in animal models to interventionists and practicing clinicians. I made the most of my time in BBH, attaining a dual title in PhD in Biobehavioral Health and Bioethics, gaining expertise in research and and regulation surrounding measurement of biological aging in human clinical studies. During my PhD I also became affiliated with the Telomere Research Network, a coalition of basic and population scientist aimed at improving research on telomeres as sentinels of population aging and risk exposure. I continued this collaboration as a postdoc at Tulane University School of Medicine working with TRN Director Dr. Stacy Drury. Two years, one toddler, and about seven Mardi-Gras parades later I was invited back to my alma mater as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Associate Faculty of the Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture.  

My research takes a three-pronged approach to optimize multi-dimensional methods to measure human aging and functional decline, with an emphasis on telomere biology. This work has been highlighted by Science Daily, the American Council for Science and Health, and the New York Post. My overarching mission is to develop efficient means to track individual differences in aging to improve the effectiveness of interventions aimed at increasing healthspan. 

From a biostatistical standpoint, I leverage existing data from large-scale cohort studies to validate metrics of biological aging. This includes examining their ability to predict cognitive and physical function (1-2), testing if they register differences in life course risk exposures such as food insecurity, poverty, and ‘costs of reproduction’ (3), and investigating their responsiveness to gero-protective interventions like caloric restriction in partnership with the CALERIE™ Clinical Trial (4-5). Most recently, I have expanded my research enterprise to the field of metabolomics, collaborating with the and COnsortium of METabolomics Studies (COMETS) to generate a novel measurement of metabolomic aging (6). I have also expanded my extension efforts by partnering with Bayer Healthcare and the DNA biotechnology company Hurdle to develop a novel biomarker of "inflammaging" with direct-to-market translation (7).  

Bench science remains a central pillar in my research schema, and I have over a decade of experience processing a variety of biospecimens (e.g., culture, blood, urine, saliva) and conducting relevant quantification assays (e.g., immunoassay, qPCR, RNAseq). My graduate research disentangled factors impacting telomere measurement validity (8-10), and I continued this work as a postdoc within the Telomere Research Network to further understand factors contributing to methodological variation in telomere measurements (11-12). To further advance the field, I am currently working to generate a novel assay to generate chromosome-specific telomere length. 

Inspired by an innovative study design produced by my PhD advisor (13), the final dimension of my research involves translating the rigor of animal model research into human clinical studies. Toward this end, we bring subjects into the clinic, expose them to metabolic, endocrine, and immunogenic stressors, and probe the robustness of aging measurements to such transient perturbations (14).

NUTR 481: Critical Appraisal of Nutrition Literature  (Texas A&M University)

BBH 440: Principles of Epidemiology (Penn State University) 

BBH 101: Introduction to Biobehavioral Health (Penn State University) 

UNDERGRADAUTE EDUCATION: 

B.S. Biochemistry & Genetics, Texas A&M University (2013)

B.A. Mathematics, Texas A&M University (2013) 

GRADUATE EDUCATION

M.S. Educational Administration, Texas A&M University (2015)

Ph.D. Biobehavioral Health & Bioethics, Pennsylvania State University (2020) 

Neahous-Shepardson Faculty Development Scholar, Texas A&M University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (2024)

Butler-Williams Scholar, National Institute on Aging (2021)

T32 Pathways to Aging Predoctoral Fellow, Pennsylvania State University Center for Healthy Aging (2018-2020)

University Distinguished Graduate Fellow, Pennsylvania State University (2015-2017)

Graduate Assistant of the Year, Texas A&M University Division of Student Affairs (2015)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS 

1. Hastings WJ, Shalev I, & Belsky DW (2019). Comparability of biological aging measures in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Study, 1999-2001. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 106, 171-178, doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2019.03.012.
2. Hastings WJ, Almeida DM, & Shalev I (2021) Conceptual and analytical overlap between allostatic load and systemic biological aging measures: Analyses from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States. Journals of Gerontology Series A. doi: 10.1093/Gerona/glab187.  
3. Shirazi TN*, Hastings WJ*, Rosinger AY, & Ryan CP (2020) Parity predicts biological age acceleration in post-menopausal women: Evidence from NHANES 1999-2010. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 1-13. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-77082-2.  
4. Waziry R, Ryan CP, Corcoran DL, Huffman KM, Kobor MS, Kothari M, Graf GH, Kraus VB, Kraus WE, Lin DTS, Pieper CF, Ramaker ME, Bhapkar M, Das SK, Ferrucci L, Hastings WJ, Kebbe M, Parker DC, Racette SB, Shalev I, Schilling B, & Belsky DW (2023) Effect of long-term caloric restriction on DNA methylation measures of biological aging in healthy adults: CALERIE Trail Analysis. Nature Aging. doi: 10.1038/s43587-022-00357-y. 
5. Hastings WJ, Ye Q, Wolf S, Ryan C, Das SK, Huffman KM, Kobor MS, Kraus WE, MacIsaac JL, Martin CK, Racette SB, Redman LM, Belsky DW, & Shalev I (2024). Effect of long-term caloric restriction on telomere length in healthy adults: CALERIE™ trial analysis. Aging Cell. doi: 10.1111/acel.14149.
6. Hastings WJ (May 2024) Leveraging COMETS to explore impacts of caloric restriction on metabolomic aging. Consortium of Metabolomic Studies NCI/NCATS Virtual Workshop. Online.  
7. Schmunk LJ, Call TP, McCartney DL, Javaid H, Hastings WJ, Jovicevic W, Kojadinovic D, Tomkinson N, Zlamalova E, McGee K, Sullivan J, Ovari V, Wishart K, Behrens C, Stone E, Gavrilov M, Thompson R, Jackson T, Lord JM, Stubbs TM, Marioni RE, Martin-Herranz DE (2025) A novel framework to  build biologically interpretable saliva-based DNA methylation biomarkers: quantifying systemic chronic inflammation as a case study. Aging Cell. doi: 10.111/acel.14444. 
8. Hastings WJ, Shalev I, & Belsky DW (2017). Translating measures of biological aging to test effectiveness of geroprotective interventions: What can we learn from research on telomeres?. Frontiers in Genetics, 8, 164, doi: 10.3389/fgene.2017.00164. 
9. Hastings WJ, Eisenberg DTA, & Shalev I (2021) Impact of amplification efficiency approaches on telomere length measurement via qPCR. Frontiers in Genetics. doi:10.3389/fgene.2021.728603.
10. Hastings WJ, Eisenberg DTA, & Shalev I (2020) Uninterruptible power supply improves precision and external validity of telomere length measurement via qPCR. Experimental Results. doi: 10.1017/exp.2020.58. 
11. Wolf SE, Hastings WJ, Ye Q, Etzel L, Apsley AT, Chiaro C, Heim CM, Heller T, Noll JG, O’Donnell KJ, Schreier HMC, Shenk CE, Shalev I, (2024) Cross-tissue comparison of telomere length and DNA quality metrics among individuals aged 8 to 70 years. PLOS One. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0290918.
12. Lin J, Verhulst S, Fernandez Alonso C, Dagnall C, Shahinaz G, Hastings WJ, Lai TP, Shalev I, Wang Y, Zheng, YL, Epel E, & Drury SS (2022). Effects of DNA extraction, DNA integrity, and laboratory on the precision of qPCR-based telomere length measurement – a multi-lab impartial study. bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2022.12.14.520438. 
13. Shalev I, Hastings WJ, Etzel L, Hendrick KA, Israel S, Russell M, Siegel SR, & Zinoble M (2020) Investigating the impact of early-life adversity on physiological, immune, and gene expression responses to acute stress: A pilot feasibility study. PLoS One 15(4), doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0221310.
14. Apsley AT, Ye Q, Etzel L, Wolf S, Hastings WJ, Mattern BC, Siegel SR, & Shalev I (2023) Biological stability of DNA methylation measurements over varying intervals of time and in the presence of acute stress. Epigenetics. doi: 10.1080/15592294.2023.2230686.