Language

Celina graduated from the University of San Diego with a BA degree in Behavioral Neuroscience and a minor in Philosophy before she obtained her MS degree in Neuroimaging and Informatics from the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.

Nilgoun Bahar, SLP, PhD, is a postdoctoral research scholar in the ALBA Lab at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, where she works primarily on the Dyslexia Project. She earned her PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Oxford’s Brain, Speech, and Language Lab and holds a clinical master’s degree in speech-language pathology from the University of Toronto. She completed her clinical residency at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto.

Nicoletta holds a PhD degree in Psychological Sciences and Education from the University of Trento and a Master’s degree in Linguistics and Cognitive Studies from the University of Siena. Her research bridges theoretical linguistics and cognitive neuroscience to investigate how linguistic information is processed in the brain across different populations, including healthy and brain-injured monolingual and bilingual adults, using methods such as eye-tracking, EEG, and neuroimaging.

Elise Brenner is a product manager who is passionate about building technology that supports learning, advances research, and improves real-world decision-making. At UCSF Multitudes, she leads cross-functional product development, partnering with engineers, researchers, and educators to translate complex data and user needs into intuitive, effective tools that create meaningful impact.

Melissa is a Learning & Intervention Specialist in the ALBA Lab and Dyslexia Center.

Shirley was born in Guangzhou, China, and grew up in Los Angeles. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in pharmacology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. During her undergraduate studies, she worked as a certified pharmacy technician, gaining patient care experience in the emergency department and on the surgical nursing floor at USC Arcadia Hospital.

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.

Jessica de Leon, MD, is an associate professor in the UCSF Department of Neurology at the Weill Institute for Neurosciences and a clinician-researcher at the Edward and Pearl Fein Memory and Aging Center. She serves as the lead and founder of the Filipino outreach program at the Fein Memory and Aging Center. Dr.

Maria Luisa Gorno Tempini, MD, PhD, is a behavioral neurologist and professor in the UCSF Department of Neurology at the Weill Institute for Neurosciences. She directs the Language Neurobiology Laboratory and the UCSF Dyslexia Center at the UCSF Edward and Pearl Fein Memory and Aging Center, where she researches the neural basis of language, memory, and cognitive functions across the lifespan.

Shaili Gour, PhD, is a postdoctoral scholar in the ALBA Language Neurobiology Lab at the UCSF Edward and Pearl Fein Memory and Aging Center, part of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. Her research focuses on understanding why some people with neurodegenerative diseases respond better to treatment than others and how brain changes can help predict recovery.