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. 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.
Julia graduated from the University of California in Berkeley in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Molecular and Cell Biology, with an emphasis in neurobiology and a minor in disability studies. As an undergraduate, she volunteered as a research assistant at Cortica, a center for advanced therapies for autism and neurodevelopment, and worked part-time at UCSF in the Neural Connectivity Lab. Julia is passionate about equitable healthcare and plans to apply to medical school to pursue a career as a physician.
Nathaniel comes from Marin County and graduated from Stanford in 2018 with a degree in psychology. At Stanford he worked as a research assistant in Dr. James Gross’ lab studying the regulation of emotions in groups as well as the emotional dynamics between group members. Nathaniel also studied the effects of depression and anxiety on brain structures. At the Memory and Aging Center, he is a research coordinator in the Clinical Affective Neuroscience (CAN) Laboratory, led by Dr. Virginia Sturm.
