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.
Diana is a clinical research coordinator for the NIH-designated Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the Memory and Aging Center, where she coordinates visits for Mandarin-speaking participants. She graduated from UC Davis with a Bachelor of Science degree in Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior.
Jennifer Merrilees received her doctorate degree in nursing from the University of California, San Francisco. She is a Clinical Nurse Specialist in Geriatrics at the Memory and Aging Center and Associate Clinical Professor for the UCSF School of Nursing.
Dr. Milanini received her PhD degree from the Catholic University of Rome. Prior to that, she graduated from La Sapienza University of Rome in July 2010 with a degree in Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychological Rehabilitation. Her PhD research focused on the identification of a cognitive screening test that is sensitive to the characteristics of neurocognitive impairment. Benedetta has published a manuscript on the usefulness of the MoCA screening test within the UCSF HIV Over 60 Cohort study in the Journal of AIDS.
Carly is a speech-language pathologist at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in the ALBA Language Neurobiology Lab led by Dr. Marilu Gorno Tempini. Prior to joining the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in 2019, she worked at the Centre for Neuro Skills, a post-acute rehabilitation center for patients with traumatic and acquired brain injuries.
Dr. Zachary Miller grew up in the Washington DC metro area. He obtained an undergraduate degree double majoring in Molecular Biology and Fine Arts from Haverford College. Following this he spent two years as a research assistant at MIT’s Whitehead Institutes for Biomedical Research in Dr. Harvey Lodish’s lab. He received his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh and pursued medical internship as well as neurology residency training at the University of Washington.
Laura Mitic, PhD, is the Chief Scientific Officer at the Bluefield Project to Cure Frontotemporal Dementia. Dr. Mitic holds a BA degree from Northwestern University and a doctorate degree in cell biology from Yale University. She completed postdoctoral studies at the University of California, San Francisco. She and her husband live in San Francisco with their two children.
Mihovil is an associate specialist in the Grinberg Lab from the University of Tubingen in Germany. He is a psychiatrist and completed a PhD degree in neuroanatomy of the dopaminergic system. Mihovil has been working in finding out how certain hypothalamic nuclei degenerate in tauopathies and contribute to sleep dysfunction.
Dr. Montembeault is a postdoctoral scholar at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in the ALBA Language Neurobiology Lab led by Dr. Marilu Gorno Tempini. He completed a BS degree with honors in psychology and a PhD degree in clinical neuropsychology from University of Montreal. He aims at using multimodal neuroimaging and innovative assessment tools to better understand semantic and social cognition impairments in patients with neurodegenerative diseases.
