member

Eden Barragan, PhD

Research Specialist

Eden received a BS degree in Biological Sciences from UC Irvine and a PhD in Neuroscience from UC Davis. Her doctoral work broadly focused on learning, memory, and synaptic plasticity. Now, as a member of the Boxer Lab, she is interested in facilitating more equitable and inclusive research of neurodegenerative disorders.

Collin Liu

Lab Assistant

Collin has BS degree in Biological Sciences, with an emphasis in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Merced. He is driven by an inclination for multidisciplinary knowledge and a desire to learn. During his undergraduate study, he worked in the lab of Dr. Betsy Dumont and under the guidance of postdoc Dr. Gregory Mutumi to explore the morphological adaptations of sensory structures within the skulls of bats. His experiences were further enriched by journal club, quantitative systems biology seminars, and his work with diceCT and 3D visualization.

Xavier Lopez

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator – Care Team Navigator

Xavier graduated from UC Berkeley in May 2023 with a double major in Psychology and Social Welfare. During college, he worked in the Family & Culture Lab with Dr. Qing Zhou as a research assistant investigating the links among bilingual development, executive function, parent-child and teacher-child relationships, and socio-emotional development in young children from Mexican American and Chinese American families. He also worked in La Clínica de la Raza as an Integrated Behavioral Health Volunteer serving undocumented individuals in the East Bay. 

Katherine Lirio

Lab Assistant

Katherine graduated from the University of California, Davis with a BS degree in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior. During her time in college, she explored various paths, including an internship at the local hospital as well as working at the COVID Testing Facility at UC Davis. She is currently working with the Sample Processing Laboratory at UCSF as a Lab Assistant to aid with the processing and shipping of various biospecimens for clinical studies.

Piyush Maiti, MS

Neuroimaging Data Analyst

Piyush is a Neuroimaging Data analyst in the RabLab, with experience in medical imaging. He obtained his master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Southern California and a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from India.

Sean Coulborn, PhD, MSc

Postdoctoral Scholar

Sean Coulborn is a postdoctoral researcher at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center under the mentorship of Dr. David Perry. His research focuses on improving the certainty of clinical diagnosis and predicting the pathological diagnosis in neurodegenerative diseases.

Lana Callies

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator

Lana is a research coordinator in Dr. Joel Kramer’s lab working primarily on the Active Mind Clinical Trial as well as the Brain Aging Network for Cognitive Health study and the Mechanisms of Executive Decline study. She graduated with a BS degree in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior from UC Davis in June 2022

Valerie Escobar, PhD

Specialist

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.