UCSF’s innovative, collaborative approach to patient care, research and education spans disciplines across the life sciences, making it a world leader in scientific discovery and its translation to improving health.
Valentina joined Dr. Joel Kramer’s lab as a research coordinator in September of 2021 and works primarily on the Healthy Brain Aging study as well as the Mechanisms of Executive Decline study. She graduated with a BA degree in Neurobiology from UC Berkeley in May of 2021 and has interests in neurodegenerative disorders with plans of becoming a neurosurgeon.
Sarah Dulaney earned a Master of Science degree in gerontological nursing at UCSF and is certified as a Geriatric Clinical Nurse Specialist by the American Nurses Credentialing Center.
Shubir Dutt, PhD, is a neuropsychology postdoctoral fellow at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. He completed his PhD degree in Clinical Psychology (Major areas of study: Neuropsychology & Clinical Geropsychology) at the University of Southern California in 2023.
Alex started off in the neuropathology core at UCSF’s Memory and Aging Center in 2013 under the mentorship of Prof. Lea T. Grinberg. There, he developed interests in the factors that influence selective vulnerability underlying early Alzheimer’s disease stages and associated neuropsychiatric manifestations. Now a Ph.D. Candidate at UC Berkeley, he is co-advised by Prof. Grinberg and Prof. Daniela Kaufer and continues his focus on neurodegenerative disease vulnerability.
Heather Murphy Elgin, EdM, is a research coordinator for the UCSF Dyslexia Center’s Multitudes project. Prior to UCSF, she worked in educational research as an instructional coach, reading specialist, special educator, and classroom teacher in Cambridge, New York City, Washington, DC, and San Francisco.
Valerie joined the Yokoyama Lab in 2023 as a staff scientist with a career-long interest in evaluating genetic factors involved in neurological diseases. She earned a PhD degree in Neuroscience at the University of Michigan, where she identified transcriptional regulation sequences for a gene involved in epilepsy and movement disorders. During her postdoctoral fellowship at NHGRI and UCSF, she studied the role of alpha-synuclein in Parkinson’s disease.
Dr. Manizhe Eslami Amirabadi attended medical school in Yazd, Iran. Passionate about equity in healthcare, she then worked as a family physician for a year in an underserved area of Iran before starting her neurology residency in Tehran. She became interested in cognitive decline in the setting of chronic systemic illnesses and worked with chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients during her residency. She eventually moved to the US to pursue further training in cognitive neurology hoping to improve the quality of life for people living with dementia.
Zoe is a speech-language pathologist at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in the ALBA Language Neurobiology Lab led by Dr. Marilu Gorno Tempini. Zoe has a BS degree in Cognitive Science with a specialization in neuroscience from UC San Diego and an MS degree in Speech-Language Pathology from Vanderbilt University.
