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.
Salma was born and raised in Orange County, California. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in May 2022 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Molecular and Cell Biology: Neurobiology and Spanish Linguistics. She is now working as an Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator to aid with various studies related to Alzheimer's disease in the Rabinovici Lab.
Bailey is a clinical research coordinator in the Rankin Socioemotional Neuropsychology Lab at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. She is helping research fMRI predictors of empathy in healthy aging and frontotemporal dementia. She received her bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences and Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and completed her master’s degree in Translational Medicine from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco.
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.
Igor Prufer Q.C. Araujo obtained his MD degree at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He completed his neurology residency at Texas Tech University in Lubbock Texas being the chief resident in his final year of training. His current research interests include the benefits of multilingualism to cognitive reserve, the neural basis of decision making and socioeconomic factors affecting dementia care.
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.
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 a 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 using these skills to translate neuroscience research into programs and products that tackle inequity in health and education. As an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Global Brain Health, I worked 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 with a focus on marginalized older people.
Rebecca Snell graduated from UC Davis with a Bachelor of Science degree in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior with an emphasis in Neurobiology and a minor in Psychology. She works as part of the Clinical Trials Team with Dr. Adam Boxer.
Jet Vonk received her PhD degree in Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences from the City University of New York Graduate Center, with a focus on neurolinguistics and cognitive science. She also maintains an affiliation with the Department of Epidemiology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, where she is currently obtaining a second PhD in Epidemiology.
