UB philosopher awarded $3.8 million NIH grant on aging and loneliness

UB faculty member John Beverley has received a five-year, $3.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to connect research in two fields of psychology that promises to improve our understanding for how solitude relates to flourishing in older age.

Beverley, assistant professor of philosophy, College of Arts and Sciences, is an ontologist, an area of philosophy concerned with organizing broad categories of information and their most basic relationships.

His interdisciplinary team will create a publicly accessible online resource to promote healthy aging at the intersection of solitude and the sense of connection older adults feel as they age. This connection, a perspective known as gerotranscendence, is associated with life satisfaction and well-being.

The web-based generative AI tool, for both researchers and the public, will provide information greatly beyond the capacity of a basic search engine. But the background for creating this sophisticated instrument first requires integrating the languages of two complex but overlapping research fields into one vast set of shared terms and definitions.

“This is where ontology comes in,” says Beverley, the grant’s principal investigator and co-director of UB’s National Center for Ontological Research. “Ontologies make it possible to exchange and use information across both research areas by identifying the logical structure underwriting them. By making explicit the implicit connections in these fields, our tool will allow users to explore their intersections, making it easier to identify complementary and novel avenues of research.”

Ontologies are not new. The iPhone’s Siri app relies on ontologies. The immense datasets involved in decoding the human genome required ontologies. In each instance, as is the case with Beverley’s project, large numbers of disparate datasets must come together in ways that are interoperable.

That’s nearly impossible without an ontology.

“Ontologies can and often do clarify ambiguities and highlight core commonalities across literatures,” Beverley explains.

He says his project, which is funded by the NIH’s National Institute on Aging, benefits greatly from subject-matter experts who uniquely position the team working on this grant.

This includes UB colleagues Julie Bower, professor of psychology (solitude), and Hollen Reischer, visiting professor of psychology (gerotranscendence), as well as University of Florida faculty member William Duncan, an alumnus of the UB philosophy graduate program. Duncan, like Beverley, is an expert in ontology engineering, and is joined by Yongqun “Oliver” He, associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan, an expert in bioinformatics.

“A lot of solitude research has focused on the negative aspects of being alone, while almost all of the research on gerotranscendence has been about the positive aspects of feeling connected,” says Beverley. “Research, however, has started identifying positive aspects of solitude in older age, but that’s not connected to the gerotranscendence literature.”

Older adults can spend twice as much time alone, either by preference or necessity, as those in middle age.

“While these historically disparate literatures are in many ways different, a closer examination suggests they address similar facets of solitude,” says Beverley. “Connecting research in these fields promises to enhance what we know about healthy aging.”

In addition to facilitating basic and interventional research, the grant’s generative AI will also help lay users.

“Everyone who uses this tool will be able to walk away with important information that’s more accurate, justified and valuable than a general internet search that isn’t based on ontology,” says Beverley.

He says the rollout will involve a lot of grassroots dissemination.

“We plan to link up with various populations and organizations so that people have access to our work,” he says. “An overarching goal of this project is to help not only researchers, but adults and caregivers trying to get a handle on their daily experiences.”