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.
Mariah L. Pospisil, MEd, is a lifelong educator and advocate for students with dyslexia. After receiving her AB degree in Psychology from Harvard College, Mariah earned her teaching credential and Master of Education as an Education Specialist, Mild/Moderate from Notre Dame de Namur University. As a teacher, instructional coach, and school leader, Mariah focused on implementing instructional and social-emotional interventions to support students with dyslexia throughout their K–12 educational journeys.
Caroline Prioleau writes and designs content for the Memory and Aging Center and the Global Brain Health Institute. She is interested in using design and technology to share complex information and facilitate collaborations across clinical, research and non-medical groups. She also co-leads an oral history project, hear/say, that focuses on collecting personal stories about the experience of aging, dementia and caregiving.
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.
Pongpat Putthinun is a health economist and postdoctoral scholar in the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. He joined the Decision Lab team, led by Dr. Winston Chiong, and is currently working on a project aimed at understanding how genetic predispositions to frontotemporal dementia influence decision-making in the pre-symptomatic phase. Through neuroeconomic methods, the research seeks to identify incidents of early impaired judgment that could lead to early intervention strategies to decelerate the onset of frontotemporal dementia.
Dr. Gil Rabinovici holds the Edward Fein and Pearl Landrith Distinguished Professorship in Memory & Aging in the UCSF Department of Neurology. He received his BS degree from Stanford University and MD from Northwestern University Medical School. He completed neurology residency (and chief residency) at UCSF and a behavioral neurology fellowship at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center (MAC), where he cares for patients with cognitive disorders.
Dr. Kamalini Ranasinghe received her medical degree from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and completed her internship training in general medicine and general surgery. She earned her doctorate degree in Cognition and Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Dallas, under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Kilgard.
Dr. Kate Rankin is a professor in the UCSF Department of Neurology who specializes in the neuropsychological, neuroanatomic and genetic underpinnings of human socioemotional behavior in healthy aging and neurodegenerative disease. She studied psychology at Yale for her undergraduate work and received graduate degrees from Fuller School of Psychology in Pasadena, including her PhD degree in clinical psychology and a master’s degree in theology.
Claudio graduated from Harvard University in May 2022 with a degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology and a secondary focus in Global Health and Health Policy. During college, he had the opportunity to conduct research under the guidance of Professor Richard Losick, exploring the complexities of chronic microbial infections for his senior research thesis.
Rochelle-Jan (RJ) Reyes (they/she) is a staff research associate in the de Leon Lab at UCSF. With Dr. de Leon and members of the lab, they support the Bilingualism Study that aims to investigate bilingualism’s effect on healthy aging and neurodegenerative disease. RJ is also a PROPEL scholar at UCSF.
