People

Sreya Dhanam

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator

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 an Assistant 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.

Valentina Diaz

Asst. Clinical Research Coordinator

Valentina joined Dr. Joel Kramer’s lab as a research coordinator in September of 2021 and works primarily on the Healthy Brain Aging study as well as the Mechanisms of Executive Decline study. She graduated with a BA degree in Neurobiology from UC Berkeley in May of 2021 and has interests in neurodegenerative disorders with plans of becoming a neurosurgeon.

Joyce Do, BA, BS

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator

Joyce joined the Memory and Aging Center as an Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator for the frontotemporal dementia research team on the Frontotemporal Dementia: Genes, Images and Emotions study. She graduated from the University of California, Davis with a bachelor's degree in psychology and human development.

Theresa Driscoll Driscoll

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator

Sarah Dulaney, RN, MS, CNS

Geriatric Clinical Nurse Specialist

Sarah Dulaney earned a Master of Science degree in gerontological nursing at UCSF and is certified as a Geriatric Clinical Nurse Specialist by the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

Shubir Dutt

Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuropsychology

Shubir Dutt, PhD, is a neuropsychology postdoctoral fellow at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. He completed his PhD degree in Clinical Psychology (Major areas of study: Neuropsychology & Clinical Geropsychology) at the University of Southern California in 2023.

Alexander Ehrenberg

Staff Research Associate

Alex started off in the neuropathology core at UCSF’s Memory and Aging Center in 2013 under the mentorship of Prof. Lea T. Grinberg. There, he developed interests in the factors that influence selective vulnerability underlying early Alzheimer’s disease stages and associated neuropsychiatric manifestations. Now a Ph.D. Candidate at UC Berkeley, he is co-advised by Prof. Grinberg and Prof. Daniela Kaufer and continues his focus on neurodegenerative disease vulnerability.

Heather Elgin

Clinical Research Coordinator

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.

Tara Ellingson

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator
Aedan Enriquez

Aedan Enriquez

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator

Valerie Escobar, PhD

Specialist

Valerie joined the Yokoyama Lab in 2023 as a staff scientist with a career-long interest in evaluating genetic factors involved in neurological diseases. She earned a PhD degree in Neuroscience at the University of Michigan, where she identified transcriptional regulation sequences for a gene involved in epilepsy and movement disorders. During her postdoctoral fellowship at NHGRI and UCSF, she studied the role of alpha-synuclein in Parkinson’s disease.

Manizhe Eslami Amirabadi, MD

Behavioral Neurology Clinical Fellow

Dr. Manizhe Eslami Amirabadi attended medical school in Yazd, Iran. Passionate about equity in healthcare, she then worked as a family physician for a year in an underserved area of Iran before starting her neurology residency in Tehran. She became interested in cognitive decline in the setting of chronic systemic illnesses and worked with chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients during her residency. She eventually moved to the US to pursue further training in cognitive neurology hoping to improve the quality of life for people living with dementia.

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