Dawn Alley is completing her Ph.D. in gerontology at the University of Southern California Davis School of Gerontology. Her education in gerontology prepared her to use a multidisciplinary approach and lifecourse perspective to study the complex issues surrounding aging and health. Her research focuses on ways to integrate biological and social perspectives on late-life social and ethnic health disparities in disability, frailty, and cognition. She is particularly interested in using biomarkers to understand variation in health trajectories among older people. In her dissertation, she examined socioeconomic differences in biomarkers of inflammation and the relationships between inflammation and cognitive decline. As a Health and Society Scholar, she plans to continue and expand this research by exploring the ways in which inflammation mediates the relationships between infectious and chronic disease. She is also interested in working to integrate psychological and biological perspectives on stress in aging and in studying the relationship between early life experiences and health trajectories later in life.