Kathleen Drew joined the Memory and Aging Center in October 2005 as a Financial Analyst. Prior to joining the MAC staff, she worked in a wide range of positions including EEOC program analyst at IBM, software quality engineer at PeopleSoft and the truck boss for a gasoline jobber in Colorado.
After hours, she takes classes in mathematics and art trying to get the better of both.
The goal of our research is to investigate mechanisms of longevity, resilience and neurodegenerative disease. Broadly we investigate how aging pathways can confer resilience to a brain and counter neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Using genetic mouse models, cell culture methods, and study of human populations using cutting-edge techniques, we study whether longevity-derived mechanisms can pave a path toward development of urgently needed therapies in aging and disease.
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.
Alex started at UCSF in Spring 2012 as an intern under Dr. Pierre-Antoine Gourraud in the Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Research Lab. In 2013, he joined UCSF’s Memory and Aging Center as a staff member under the mentorship of neuropathologist, Prof. Lea T. Grinberg. There, he developed his interests in neurodegenerative diseases, specifically selective vulnerability and resilience at the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and the neuropsychiatric manifestations associated with those stages. Beginning in 2015, he also joined Dr.
Fanny Elahi is a board-certified neurologist with specific expertise in the evaluation and management of patients with cognitive and behavioral disorders due to degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. She completed her bachelor's degree at Columbia University, her MD from Icahn School of Medicine, at Mount Sinai, and her DPhil from Oxford University.
Emma received her BA degree in biology from Swarthmore College in 2017. While at Swarthmore, she developed an interest in public health, which lead to her research on methods used by medical professionals to combat the stigma of schizophrenia in Valparaíso, Chile. After working as a medical scribe at CityMD in New York City for one year, she returned to her native Bay Area. At the Memory and Aging Center, Emma assists families with the donation process and acts as Dr. Bill Seeley’s administrative assistant.
Dr. Michael Erkkinen received his medical degree from Dartmouth College. He completed an internship in Internal Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, residency in Neurology at the combined Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Program, and fellowships in Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School until 2020, when he re-joined the Memory and Aging Center team to serve as the clinic’s medical director.
Originally from San Diego, California, Sabrina graduated from UC Berkeley in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in cognitive science and a minor in Spanish language and literature. As an undergraduate, she worked with Dr. Robert Clark at UC San Diego to investigate the effects of hippocampal lesions in the spatial cognition of rats and later worked with Dr. David Whitney at UC Berkeley to create online tests to study human visual perception.
Rana graduated from UC Berkeley (2018) with a BA degree in molecular and cellular biology with an emphasis in neuroscience. Rana started volunteering at the MAC in fall 2014, where she joined the Grinberg lab researching the pathology of tauopathies. Her research focused on investigating the selective vulnerability of brainstem regions of various dementias. Rana now continues to work in the Grinberg lab as the lab manager and is continuing her investigation in the effect of dementia on the brainstem.
