Dr. Morten Scheibye-Knudsen

For Morten Scheibye-Knudsen, M.D., Dr. Med. Sci., Ph.D., aging is the largest risk factor for most diseases and damage to our genome is likely the cause of aging. He is focused on exploring the physiological consequences of DNA damage and what we can do to intervene in genotoxic insults. His goal is to understand, modulate, and perhaps treat aging and age related diseases.

Morten earned his Doctor of Medicine in 2007 from Københavns Universitet where he also earned his PhD in Neurodegeneration in Accelerated Aging in 2016.

He started his working experience as a student worker at Novo Nordisk Engineering in 1998. He learned to be a multidisciplinary worker, from being a secretary to IT specialist. In the same year he was drafted as a Firefighter. Soon after, he started with his seven year studies for his MD.

During which he became a Teacher where he taught third year medical students microscopic and macroscopic anatomy of the internal organs covering everything from the reproductive system to the oropharynx. Towards the end of his studies he received a scholarship to work in the laboratory of professor Bjørn Quistorff on mitochondrial bioenergetics.

After graduation, he worked as Physician at Slagelse Hospital and at Nuuk Medical Clinic in Greenland where he mostly managed the emergency room.

In late 2008, Morten work drastically changed. He became Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institute on Aging at National Institute of Health in Baltimore, Maryland. His work focused on the cross-talk between DNA repair and mitochondrial function in neurodegeneration and aging. In 2013, at NIH, he became Research Fellow and in 2015, Visiting Professor.

For two years, Morten lectured on the Biological Basis of Aging course for graduate students at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Currently, he manages his online companies Forsøgsperson.dk and Mitodb.com and volunteers as Reviewer and Editor for multiple journals and publications. Forsøgsperson.dk recruits volunteers for basic scientific studies. With up to 100,000 hits monthly this has grown to become the largest single provider of research volunteers in Denmark. Mitodb.com was created for the scientific community to investigate possible links between clinical symptoms seen in genetic diseases and mitochondrial pathology.

Morten is Assistant Professor and group leader of the Center for Healthy Aging at University of Copenhagen and editor of Journal of Gerontology & Geriatric Medicine.

Visit his LinkedIn profile and Facebook page. Visit his online disease database. Visit his company website Forsøgsperson.