Cynthia Jane Kenyon (born February 21, 1954) is an American molecular biologist and biogerontologist known for her genetic dissection of aging in a widely used model organism, the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans.

In 1999, she co founded-Elixir Pharmaceuticals with Leonard Guarente to try to discover and develop drugs that would slow down the process that makes people age.

[1] In April 2014, Kenyon was named Vice President of Aging Research at Calico, a new company focused on health, well-being, and longevity.

These findings demonstrated that Hox genes were not simply involved in segmentation, as thought, but instead were part of a much more ancient and fundamental metazoan patterning system.

[1] Kenyon's findings have led to the discovery that an evolutionarily conserved hormone signaling system influences aging in other organisms, perhaps also including mammals.