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.
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.
Gabriella is a bilingual speech-language pathologist at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in the Dyslexia Center led by Dr. Marilu Gorno Tempini. Gabriella has a BA degree in Psychology from the University of Puerto Rico and an MS degree in Speech and Language Pathology from Carlos Albizu University. Gabriella is a native Spanish speaker, raised and educated in Puerto Rico, and is passionate about bilingualism.
In addition to her doctorate degree in Developmental Neuroscience from the University of Pisa, Francesca Pei brings over 20 years of leadership, operational management and strategic planning in a variety of health care, research, academic and education settings. She joined UCSF in 2022 as the Chief Operating Officer for Applied Neuroscience projects in the ALBA Lab at the MAC.
Mei graduated from UC Berkeley in May 2022 with a degree in Cognitive Science and a minor in Computer Science. As an undergrad, she worked as a research assistant in the Gopnik Cognitive Development Lab, studying language acquisition and causal reasoning in children, and the Wilbrecht Neuroscience Lab, using calcium imaging to study the neural correlates of learning in juvenile and adult mice.
Andrea graduated from Cornell University in May 2022 with a major in Biology & Society and a minor in Latin American Studies. She joined the MAC in June 2022 as an assistant research coordinator in the Dementia Imaging Genetics Lab, coordinating a study that aims to identify how early-disease-specific neural circuit differences develop in children carrying mutations causing frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Sarah Kaufman received her undergraduate degree in Molecular and Cell Biology, with a focus in Neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley. She completed her MD/PhD degrees through Washington University in St. Louis MSTP. Her graduate research focused on tau aggregation and tau strain biology in the laboratory of Marc Diamond. After completing her dual degree she began Neurology residency at the University of California, San Francisco.
Drew attended undergraduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill, obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree in Public Health (BSPH) with a major in Health Policy and Management. After graduation, he worked for a strategy consulting firm in healthcare for two years in Washington D.C. He went to Johns Hopkins for medical school and then came to UCSF for neurology residency.
His interests have predominantly been in implementation science, business in medicine, quality improvement, and clinical presentations in the grey area between neurology and psychiatry.
Sreya graduated from UC Santa Barbara in June 2022, where she majored in Biopsychology. At UC Santa Barbara, Sreya completed an independent research project studying the changes in vocal attractiveness in relation to the female fertile window and other reproductive cycle phases.
Sreya currently works as an Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator under Dr. Adam Staffaroni. She will be working on remote projects testing and validating a smartphone app designed for patients with frontotemporal dementia.
After over a decade in education leadership, teaching, leading teams, and developing programs in the arts, humanities, and medical education, I am putting those skills to use in approaching dementia as a global public health challenge. As an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Global Brain Health, I am working with colleagues at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, the Division of Geriatrics, and at Trinity College Dublin to develop protocols for intervening in modifiable risk factors for dementia across the life course.
