Rich Allsopp earned his B.Sc. with Honors from University of Waterloo, Ontario Canada, and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from McMaster University, Hamilton Ontario. He studied in the lab of Dr. Calvin Harley for his thesis project which involved studying the role of telomere shortening in replicative aging of human cells, including fibroblasts and hematopoietic stem cells. In 1993, during his thesis studies, he joined Dr. Harley in the relocation of the lab to Geron Corporation, Menlo Park CA, where he continued to study telomere and telomerase biology, particularly in relation to aging.
After attaining his Ph.D. degree, Rich continued on at Geron Corporation post doctoral training, where he collaborated with the lab of Dr. Ron DePinho, then at Harvard University, to clone the murine telomerase reverse transcriptase (Tert) gene. Rich then transitioned to the lab of Dr. Irving Weissman at Stanford University for a second post doctoral fellowship. At Stanford, he created a Tert transgenic mouse strain to study the effects of telomerase and telomere maintenance on the long term replicative lifespan of hematopoietic stem cells (HSC). In 2003, he joined the Institute for Biogenesis Research, John A Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii, as a tenure track Assistant Professor to continue his research on telomere biology and stem cell aging.
Rich was promoted to Associate Professor (with tenure) in 2010. At this time, and having secured NIH R grant funding, he began a collaboration with Dr. Brad Willcox at Kuakini Medical Center. Dr. Willcox and his team had recently identified a variant of the human FOXO3 gene which was robustly associated with human lifespan. Together, they secured additional NIH funding to study the effect of the longevity associated FOXO3 variant on telomeres during human aging, and to further decipher the mechanism by which this variant affects human longevity. Rich was promoted to full Professor in 2019, and continues to actively engage in human longevity research, including ongoing projects with Dr. Willcox.
