Kate Creevy to receive 2026 AVMA canine research career award
Bottom line
Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences professor Dr. Kate Creevy has been selected to receive the 2026 American Veterinary Medical Association Career Achievement in Canine Research Award, recognizing her long-term contributions to canine aging and longevity research. Creevy is a professor at Texas A&M, the Helen McWhorter Chair in Small Animal Medicine, and chief veterinary officer of the Dog Aging Project, a large-scale research initiative studying aging in companion dogs. Texas A&M said the project has enrolled more than 50,000 dogs, and related published work describes the Dog Aging Project as an open-science effort examining genetics, environment, multimorbidity, frailty, and other drivers of healthy aging. (vetmed.tamu.edu)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, the award highlights how companion-animal research is increasingly shaping both clinical geriatrics and One Health science. Creevy’s work has helped move canine aging from a niche academic topic toward a large, data-rich field with direct relevance for preventive care, cognitive health, chronic disease surveillance, and client communication with pet parents about healthy longevity. It also draws attention to the TRIAD trial, a multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled study testing whether rapamycin can extend lifespan and improve healthspan in middle-aged dogs. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
What to watch: Watch for further data from the Dog Aging Project and TRIAD as the field looks for clinically meaningful aging biomarkers and evidence on whether longevity interventions can translate into everyday veterinary practice. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
Dr. Kate Creevy of Texas A&M has been named the 2026 recipient of the AVMA Career Achievement in Canine Research Award, an honor that recognizes sustained contributions to canine research over time. The selection adds another national marker of visibility for aging research in dogs, an area Creevy has helped build through her academic work and her leadership role in the Dog Aging Project. (vetmed.tamu.edu)
Creevy’s recognition comes as canine longevity research has matured from small, exploratory studies into a broader, structured field. The Dog Aging Project was designed as an open-science, community-based effort to collect longitudinal health, environmental, genomic, and veterinary data from companion dogs living in real homes. Published descriptions of the project frame dogs as a particularly useful model for aging because they share human environments, develop many similar age-related conditions, and age on a compressed timeline that may make interventions easier to study. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
At Texas A&M, Creevy serves as professor and Helen McWhorter Chair in Small Animal Medicine, while also serving as chief veterinary officer for the Dog Aging Project. Texas A&M’s awards listings identify her as the 2026 AVMA canine research honoree, and the project’s team page confirms her leadership role. The university source says her research portfolio includes more than 80 peer-reviewed publications and emphasizes the scale of the Dog Aging Project, with more than 50,000 enrolled dogs. (vetmed.tamu.edu)
A central piece of that portfolio is TRIAD, the Test of Rapamycin in Aging Dogs. According to the study design paper and project materials, TRIAD is a double-masked, randomized, placebo-controlled, multicenter clinical trial evaluating whether rapamycin can extend lifespan and improve healthspan in healthy, middle-aged dogs. Trial materials indicate participation includes repeated veterinary evaluations over a multiyear period, and NIH RePORTER shows federal support for the project through an R01 focused on longevity and healthspan metrics in normatively aging companion dogs. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
While this award announcement itself did not surface broad outside commentary, the surrounding field has attracted strong institutional attention. Prior AVMA canine research award announcements have framed the honor as recognition of sustained, substantive impact in canine science, and Creevy’s work fits that pattern by linking clinical internal medicine, epidemiology, cognition, and translational aging biology. Her publication record within the Dog Aging Project includes work on cognitive dysfunction prevalence and on study infrastructure intended to support wide downstream use by researchers. (news.cvm.ncsu.edu)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, Creevy’s award is more than a personal accolade. It signals that geroscience in companion animals is becoming a more established part of mainstream veterinary research, with implications for how clinicians think about preventive care, age-associated disease, and conversations with pet parents. If projects like the Dog Aging Project continue to yield usable biomarkers, risk models, or intervention data, they could eventually influence screening strategies, wellness protocols, and expectations around healthy lifespan in practice. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
The recognition also matters for the education-workforce lens. High-profile national awards can help veterinary colleges attract trainees, collaborators, and funders in emerging fields such as aging biology, data-intensive population research, and One Health translational science. For a profession managing rising caseloads of older pets, that research pipeline is directly relevant to future workforce needs in internal medicine, neurology, oncology, behavior, and primary care. This is an inference based on the project’s scope and the clinical domains it studies, rather than a statement made explicitly in the award notice. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
What to watch: The next milestones are likely to come from Dog Aging Project publications and TRIAD updates, especially any results that clarify whether rapamycin or related approaches can deliver measurable gains in lifespan, cognition, cardiac health, cancer incidence, or other healthspan outcomes in companion dogs. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)