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.
Dr. Doris Chen completed her undergraduate degree in cognitive science at UC Berkeley. She received her medical degree from the University of Nevada School of Medicine and completed her neurology residency training at UC Davis. She is currently a clinical fellow at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. Her vision is to provide comprehensive and compassionate care for individuals with neurodegenerative disease from all socioeconomic backgrounds.
Dr. David N. Soleimani-Meigooni is a neurologist who cares for patients experiencing cognitive symptoms as a result of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. He also directs the UCSF Memory and Aging Center's lumbar puncture service (this procedure obtains a sample of cerebrospinal fluid, which is analyzed to help diagnose certain neurological diseases).
Gloria Aguirre is an artist and community advocate who joined the Memory and Aging Center in 2019. She is an Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity based at George Washington University in Washington D.C. and serves as Artistic Director of Creative Minds, the San Francisco community arts for brain health initiative, and Community Engagement Manager for the Community Outreach Program at the MAC.
Dr. Staffaroni is a clinical neuropsychologist and Associate Professor at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. His research focuses on improving early detection, prognosis, and monitoring of neurodegenerative diseases through a combination of clinical tests, neuroimaging, and blood-based biomarkers. He leads studies of remote digital data collection in frontotemporal dementia using smartphone assessments and sensor technologies.
Niall Kavanagh is a communications officer with the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI). Based at UCSF, he is responsible for developing and sharing the stories and messages of GBHI and the Atlantic Fellows for Equity in Brain Health.
Kailey Mateo is the GBHI Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator based at UCSF. She works with the Monitoring and Evaluation team to provide ongoing support for the monitoring and learning activities of the program and is helping to expand into new arenas, such as evaluating social impact.
Carmen Hart is the Program and Events Manager for the Global Brain Health Institute. She works closely with the Executive Director and GBHI senior staff to coordinate, manage and plan key aspects and activities of GBHI and the Atlantic Fellows program. She brings extensive expertise in event planning, project coordination, marketing and sales in the healthcare, media, technology and luxury hospitality industries. Before joining GBHI, she managed a contact center team at George P.
Christina Veziris is an assistant clinical research coordinator in the UCSF Clinical Affective Neuroscience (CAN) Lab. She graduated from the University of San Francisco in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and minors in neuroscience and health studies. She volunteered in the CAN lab for a year and then worked in the Relationships, Emotions, and Health Lab at San Francisco State University for three years using the Facial Action Coding System to code facial emotions.
Dr. Palser joined the Clinical Affective Neuroscience (CAN) Lab in December 2018. Eleanor works with the UCSF Dyslexia Center, studying social and emotional processing in neurodevelopmental conditions, such as dyslexia and autism. To do this, she combines self-report, physiological and neuroimaging methods. Previously, she received a PhD degree in cognitive neuroscience from University College London.
Collette coordinates the Brain Health Assessment study, led by Dr. Kate Possin, which aims to develop a set of cognitive tests to detect mild neurocognitive disorders in older adults of varying medical, cultural and educational backgrounds. She also works closely with primary clinics implementing the Brain Health Assessment in their practice and with Dr. Kate Possin and Dr.
