The university says the money will benefit Kristy Townsend, an assistant professor of neurobiology at the Orono university. The university says the three-year study will allow Townsend to partner with David Harrison, who is a faculty member at Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor and an expert on mechanisms of aging.

UMaine says the goal of the study is to help identify treatments that could potentially stop or reverse conditions including diabetes and obesity. Harrison is one of three investigators in the United States who run the National Institute on Aging’s Interventions Testing Program.