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.
Laura Mitic, PhD, is the Chief Scientific Officer at the Bluefield Project to Cure Frontotemporal Dementia. Dr. Mitic holds a BA degree from Northwestern University and a doctorate degree in cell biology from Yale University. She completed postdoctoral studies at the University of California, San Francisco. She and her husband live in San Francisco with their two children.
Cathy earned a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University in New York. Her extensive knowledge about social service systems is based on her work experience at the local, state and federal level. She was a consultant, training social workers in nursing homes to maintain state licensure. Cathy is also a registered yoga teacher and a Grief Recovery Specialist.
Cecilia Alagappan has been at UCSF Memory and Aging Center (MAC) since 2011 and is a clinical and research nurse. She has over 30 years of nursing experience caring for elderly patients with various medical conditions, including those with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, cardiac disease and cancers needing home infusion therapy and pain management. As a nurse educator in a home care agency, Cecilia trained caregivers to care for patients with dementia, including assisting the family with behavior management and activities of daily living.
Sabrina (Erlhoff) Jarrott manages the development and implementation of the TabCAT software platform. TabCAT is a technologically and scientifically robust system for the administration of novel cognitive and behavioral assessment measures aimed at advancing early detection and monitoring of neurocognitive disorders developed by Dr. Kate Possin.
Dr. Kate Rankin is a professor in the UCSF Department of Neurology who specializes in the neuropsychological, neuroanatomic and genetic underpinnings of human socioemotional behavior in healthy aging and neurodegenerative disease. She studied psychology at Yale for her undergraduate work and received graduate degrees from Fuller School of Psychology in Pasadena, including her PhD degree in clinical psychology and a master’s degree in theology.
Christine M. Walsh, PhD, received her BA degree in physiology from Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin in Ireland. Dr. Walsh did her doctoral work at the University of Michigan studying the effects of REM sleep modulation on learning and memory. She also studied the neural correlates of cognitive aging. In 2011 Dr. Walsh joined the UCSF Memory and Aging Center where she has been studying sleep in both healthy older adults and in individuals with neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Walsh is particularly interested in the contribution of sleep disturbance to cognitive decline.
Charlie Toohey is the Manager of Technology and Data Management at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. He is the senior software architect for the LAVA Clinical Research Management System, a comprehensive database of patient assessment, laboratory and diagnostic data which supports many inter-related research protocols. LAVA source code is available on GitHub in the “lava” repository.
Norbert Lee joined Dr. Seeley's Selective Vulnerability Research Laboratory as a Staff Research Associate in 2010. He assists with brain banking and other histology technician functions.
Jennifer Yokoyama obtained her doctorate degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacogenomics from UCSF in December 2010 with Dr. Steven Hamilton (Department of Psychiatry and Institute for Human Genetics). Her dissertation comprised work within the Canine Behavioral Genetics Project, utilizing purebred dogs as genetic models for studying neuropsychiatric disease. Utilizing community-based canine DNA samples, Dr.
