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Biography
Dr. Karl Pillemer is the Hazel E. Reed Human Development Professor in the College of Human Ecology, Professor of Gerontology in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, and founding Director of the Cornell Institute for Translational Research on Aging. Pillemer also directs the Cornell Legacy Project and is author of the book 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans. His major interests center on human development over the life course, with a special emphasis on family and social relationships in middle age and beyond. A major program of research is on intergenerational relations in later life, with a focus on the quality of adult child - older parent relationships. A current project focuses on the causes and consequences of family estrangement, which resulted in the book Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them. Pillemer also has a career-long interest in the nature and dynamics of family caregiving for impaired older people, with curent projects exploring the role of chronic pain in caregiving situations. Another area of work is on long-term care for older persons, with a focus on the Interventions to improve care by staff.. Pillemer has a long-term program of research on conflict and abuse in families of the aged, including manystudies of the domestic and institutional abuse of older persons. Finally, he has expanded his focus on protecting vulnerable older persons to the issue of effects of climate change on older people. Pillemer recently created the Aging and Climate Change Clearinghouse, which serves as a hub for information on this topic.. His extension and outreach work involves translational research, exploring ways to speed the transfer of findings from basic research into scientifically tested interventions.