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.
As a social worker at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center Clinic, Amanda Li assists with brief psychotherapy, resource coordination and education, and psychosocial assessment to work with the multidisciplinary team with identifying areas of support that she can provide and areas of strength/growth for patients and their families.
Song Hua Li has a BS degree in biotechnology from UC Davis and has been working as a histotechnologist since 2015. She joined the Grinberg Lab in June 2019 and runs the histology experiments.
Kevin was born and raised in San Francisco, California. He attended UC Davis and graduated with a bachelor's of science degree in neurobiology, physiology and behavior and a bachelors’ of arts degree in psychology. Before joining the Memory and Aging Center, Kevin volunteered at On Lok Lifeways and interacted with Chinese elders in Chinatown. He is currently a research coordinator for the UCSF Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. He coordinates visits for the Cantonese- and English-speaking Chinese participants.
Dr. Peter A. Ljubenkov is a behavioral neurologist at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and specializes in caring for patients experiencing memory, language and behavioral changes due to neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia, and other causes of dementia.
Jolina received her master’s degree in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. For her PhD degree in clinical neuropsychology, she joined the German FTLD consortium at the Department of Neurology in Ulm, Germany to examine cognitive features and neuroimaging biomarkers in frontotemporal dementia with a focus on primary progressive aphasia. She joined the Dementia Imaging Genetics Lab in 2021 to get a deeper understanding of the brain’s connectivity and its systematic degeneration in frontotemporal dementia.
Maria Luisa Mandelli leads the neuroimaging research within the language team of the Memory and Aging Center. Her research focuses on neuroanatomical changes caused by language and other neurodegenerative disorders. She has been working on brain magnetic resonance imaging for the past ten years, with the goal of better understanding of how the brain develops, changes over time, and how it makes us who we are.
Alyson is a practice coordinator that handles many sub-specialty clinics for the MAC such as Huntington’s disease, movement disorders and genetics. She graduated from CSU Long Beach with a bachelor’s degree in health science. She enjoys baking desserts, learning about the Korean culture and language, and has a passion for helping all those in need.
Belynda Webb is an Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator (aCRC) for the California Dyslexia Screener Pilot Program. She is one of the leads for the Central Coast region. Belynda has a degree in Child Development and Educational Psychology. Her main field of interest is dyslexia and literacy.
Alex Martinez-Arroyo graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in psychology with a minor in neuroscience in May 2021. While at the University of North Carolina, he worked in Dr. Prinstein's lab where he studied adolescent interpersonal relationships, depression, and suicide. He looked for subjective biomarkers of stress and their effect on mental health. Alex also worked in Dr. Muscatell's Social Neuroscience Lab where he studied how the brain responds to health messages in people from different cultural backgrounds.
Kailey Mateo is the GBHI Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator based at UCSF. She works with the Monitoring and Evaluation team to provide ongoing support for the monitoring and learning activities of the program and is helping to expand into new arenas, such as evaluating social impact.
Mindy works with faculty and staff to design the instructional content for the Atlantic Fellows for Equity in Brain Health program at the Global Brain Health Institute.