Allen Lee graduated from UC San Diego in 2009 with a bachelor of science degree in physiology and neuroscience. At UCSD he pursued an interest in psychology and the brain by minoring in psychology and working with a great team in a psychology laboratory. Through that he had the opportunity to work in clinical and neuropsychological research with Parkinson's disease patients under a neurologist at the VA Medical Hospital. Allen has also done clinical research at the UCSD Medical Center Emergency Department that furthered his passion in medicine.

Allen joined the Memory and Aging Center in July 2010. He helps coordinate for the Chinese participants in the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center's study New Approaches to Dementia Heterogeneity, which longitudinally follows individuals in hopes of developing new ways to improve early detection and clinical care for patients with dementia.

Besides long walks on the beach, Allen enjoys learning new languages and playing all kinds of sports, especially tennis and basketball.

Ben Arevalo graduated with honors from Stanford University in 2011 with a bachelor of arts degree in human biology. While studying at Stanford, he worked for two years as an instructor for the Stanford EMT Training Program while also volunteering as an EMT with the Stanford Emergency Medical Service. In 2010, Ben spent six months in South Africa conducting research on the juvenile justice system while also helping develop an emergency first-responder training program in partnership with the University of Cape Town. Ben joined the Memory and Aging Center in June 2011, where he now coordinates the Autopsy Program.

When Ben isn’t educating families about the benefits of brain donation, he enjoys playing guitar, violin, and mandolin.

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.

Shubir Dutt works with the Imaging Core within the UCSF Memory and Aging Center.

Dr. Perry graduated from medical school at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He completed an internship in internal medicine and residency in neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota where he also researched obsessive-compulsive features in dementia. He is a clinical instructor and fellow in behavioral neurology at the Memory and Aging Center and participates in the evaluation and treatment of patients in the MAC clinic.

His current area of research interest is the impact of neurodegenerative illness on reward processing.

Dr. Sha is a native San Franciscan. She received her bachelor's degrees in neurobiology and cognitive science from UC Berkeley and a master's degree in physiology from Georgetown University. She initially came to the Memory and Aging Center (MAC) as a research coordinator for a Huntington's disease project and continued on to obtain her medical degree from Georgetown University. She started her residency in neurology at UCLA and then completed her training at Stanford University. Eight years later, she returned to the MAC as a neurology fellow with great interest in caring for and researching patients with neurodegenerative diseases including rare types of dementia and movement disorders.

Jennifer Yokoyama obtained her PhD in pharmaceutical sciences and pharmacogenomics from UCSF in December 2010. Under the tutelage of Dr. Steven Hamilton (Department of Psychiatry and Institute for Human Genetics), her dissertation comprised work completed within the context of the Canine Behavioral Genetics Project. The overarching goal of the project is to leverage the simplified genetic structure in pure breeds of dog to glean novel information on canine neuropsychiatric disorders that are analogous to complex human diseases. Utilizing community-based DNA samples from domestic, purebreed dogs, Dr. Yokoyama performed genome-wide surveys for genetic risk loci underlying the canine anxiety disorder noise phobia, as well as for loci underlying adult-onset deafness in Border collies.

Dr. Yokoyama is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Memory and Aging Center, where she is investigating genetic risk for neurodegenerative disease. Specifically, she is interested in the effect genotype can have on brain physiology, behavior and cognition in healthy adults, and how this may relate to increased vulnerability to (or protection from) disease processes in later stages of life. She is also particularly interested in understanding how these effects may differ across diverse ethnic populations. Dr. Yokoyama's long-term goal is to understand how variation across the entire genome confers risk for particular types of neurodegeneration for purposes of early treatment and therapeutic intervention.

Pia is a San Francisco native of Latino and Indian descent. She received her bachelor's degree in the biological basis of behavior in 2008 from the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn, Pia researched the effect of low birth weight on the behavioral and central nervous system (CNS) response to stress under the direction of Dr. Teresa Reyes, PhD. In addition, Pia has a background in adolescent counseling, women's health and clinical volunteering. She is presently part of the Volunteer Health Workers Program at the Women's Community Clinic in San Francisco.

After exploring clinical research in Kolkata, India as well as volunteering in the Neurosurgery and Orthopedic Surgery Research Departments at San Francisco General Hospital, Pia joined the UCSF Memory and Aging Center (MAC) in 2011. She is excited to be involved in research again and is thrilled to be working with such a comprehensive team.

Pia works with Dr. Gil Rabinovici at the MAC and in the Jagust Lab at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley. Dr. Rabinovici's research focuses on pairing clinical presentation of disease with FDG and PIB PET imaging techniques. The hope is that these techniques will increase the ability of clinicians to better understand and accurately diagnose neurodegenerative disease in the pre-clinical stages.

Manu Sidhu joined the Selective Vulnerability Research Laboratory, led by Dr. William Seeley, as a research associate in 2007. She helps conduct human neuropathological experiments and assists with brain banking.

Dr. Chiong received his medical degree from UCSF and his doctorate in philosophy from NYU, where his work focused on ethical issues in clinical research and medical education, personal identity, and brain death. He completed an internship in internal medicine at Stanford University and then returned to UCSF for his residency training in neurology. He is a clinical fellow at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Mark D'Esposito in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley.

Dr. Chiong's current research is focused on decision-making and how it is affected by aging and neurodegenerative disease. This work is supported by the American Academy of Neurology Foundation Robert Katzman, MD Clinical Research Training Fellowship.