staff

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.

Luis Martinez Roman

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator

Luis completed his medical studies at Universidad del Rosario, Colombia. He worked in the “Cedesnid” public foundation for people with low economical resources, disabilities, and neurological diseases in Bogota, Colombia. Luis received his master's degree in Neurology from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the final year of his residency, he was selected to do a rotation in the Memory and Aging Unit at Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau in Barcelona, Spain.

Lucienne Vintaer

Executive Administrative Assistant

Lucienne Vintaer is the Executive Administrative Assistant to Dr. Maria Luisa Gorno Tempini. Born and raised in San Francisco, she earned her BA degree at Scripps College of the Claremont Consortium and found her interest in organizational administration working for the University's Disability Resource Center, serving individuals with varying neurodivergence.

Pedro Pinheiro-Chagas

Assistant Professor

Pedro Pinheiro-Chagas, PhD, studies the neural architecture and dynamics of human intelligence, focusing on symbolic cognitive systems, such as mathematics and language. His research program aims at understanding how these systems develop and decline and how we can help.
 

Hannah Cho

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator

Hannah graduated from the University of Southern California in 2022 with a BS degree in Neuroscience. At USC, she was a research assistant at the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute using histology techniques to visualize fluorescently labeled neural circuits. She also studied the effects of sex hormones on Alzheimer’s disease as a research assistant at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Hannah has experience performing immunohistochemistry, perfusion-fixation surgery, confocal microscopy, and imageJ analysis.

Iman Fathali

Asst. Clinical Research Coord.

Originally from Philadelphia, Iman began working at the Memory and Aging Center (MAC) following her graduation from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in Biology and Medical Sociology. While at the University of Pennsylvania, Iman worked on projects involving neuroradiology and cognitive disorders. At the MAC, Iman's primary role is as an Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator for the national CADASIL Consortium Study, an observational study designed to study the effects of CADASIL, a form of vascular dementia. Following her time at the MAC, Iman plans to pursue medical school.

Shubir Dutt

Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuropsychology

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.

Anil Vora

Executive Analyst

Anil Vora joined the Memory and Aging Center in December 2022 as the Executive Analyst. He is responsible for managing Dr. Bruce Miller’s schedule, travel, research collaborations and other advanced administrative objectives related to the executive office. He also partners with the center’s six leadership committees acting as a primary resource for committee operations and strategic priorities.
 

Eve Merritt

Staff Research Associate

Eve has a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology, with a minor in Chemistry from the University of Utah. Before working for UCSF, she worked in quality control for the American Red Cross in Salt Lake City, Utah. At the Red Cross, she manufactured platelets for patients across the country, while also running quality control tests on all blood and plasma products. Eve joined the sample processing team at UCSF to get experience processing and shipping samples for clinical trials, as well as samples collected for genetic testing.

Pages