Laura Deming

Laura Deming is an American scientist and venture capitalist. Her work focuses on life extension, and using biological research to reduce or reverse the effects of aging.

Laura Deming is the daughter of John and Tabitha Deming; she grew up in New Zealand. Deming and her brother were homeschooled; she says she taught herself "calculus and probability and statistics, and French literature and history." At age 8, Deming became interested in the biology of aging, and at age 12 she joined the lab of Cynthia Kenyon at the University of California, San Francisco. Kenyon and Deming successfully increased the lifespan of the worm C. elegans by a factor of ten through genetic engineering. Deming was accepted to MIT at age 14, but later dropped out to accept the $100,000 Thiel Fellowship and start a venture capital firm. Deming was one of only two women in the 2011 initial class of Thiel Fellows.

Deming is a partner at and founder of The Longevity Fund, a venture capital firm focused on aging and life extension. Deming believes that science can be used to create biological immortality in humans, and has said that ending aging "is a lot closer than you might think". She has been featured in "30 Under 30" by Forbes Magazine, and was one of the stars of "The Age of Ageing", a documentary by National Geographic. She also spoke at the 2012 Singularity Summit and at the 2013 TEDMED conference.