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.
Karin (“Kari”) joined the Boxer Lab’s Clinical Trials team as a Project Manager in 2023. A San Francisco native (born at UCSF!), she has managed intervention research for over 15 years, the last ten aiming to reduce stress in family caregivers of people with dementia.
Dr. David N. Soleimani-Meigooni is a neurologist who cares for patients experiencing cognitive symptoms as a result of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. He also directs the UCSF Memory and Aging Center's lumbar puncture service (this procedure obtains a sample of cerebrospinal fluid, which is analyzed to help diagnose certain neurological diseases).
Dr. Spina received his medical degree from the University of Catania, Italy. He completed a neurology residency at the University of Siena, Italy from which he also obtained his doctorate degree on mechanisms of neurodegeneration. He was trained in neuropathology of dementia syndromes at the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center, Indianapolis in the laboratory of Dr. Bernardino Ghetti. Later, he completed an internship in internal medicine and a neurology residency at Indiana University. Dr.
Dr. Staffaroni is a clinical neuropsychologist and Associate Professor at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. His research focuses on improving early detection, prognosis, and monitoring of neurodegenerative diseases through a combination of clinical tests, neuroimaging, and blood-based biomarkers. He leads studies of remote digital data collection in frontotemporal dementia using smartphone assessments and sensor technologies.
Virginia Sturm, PhD, is the John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Foundation Endowed Professor at UCSF. She is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and she is the director of the Clinical Affective Neuroscience (CAN) Laboratory that is located in the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and affiliated with the UCSF Center for Psychophysiology and Behavior (CPB).
Jack Taylor is an Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator in the Boxer Lab of the Memory and Aging Center, focused on piloting and implementing smartphone-based cognitive assessments into ALLFTD (the ARTFL-LEFFTDS Longitudinal Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration multisite research consortium).