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.
Dr. Perry graduated from medical school at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He completed an internship in internal medicine and residency in neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota where he also researched obsessive-compulsive features in dementia. He is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Memory and Aging Center and participates in the evaluation and treatment of patients in the MAC clinic.
His current area of research interest is the impact of neurodegenerative illness on reward processing.
Stefania Pezzoli completed her PhD degree in Neuroscience at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. Her research aimed to investigate the neural and cognitive correlates of visual hallucinations in Lewy body disease and Alzheimer’s disease by integrating multimodal neuroimaging and neuropsychological measures.
Janhavi Pillai is an imaging data assistant at the ALBA Lab. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA degree in Cognitive Science and a minor in Data Science. Janhavi has previously worked as a research assistant at the UCSF Kheirbek Lab, where she examined and compared the roles of the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus and ventral hippocampus in fear and anxiety behaviors.
Stefanie Piña Escudero is a geriatrician working to understand and reduce the impact of social vulnerability on older adults with cognitive impairment. She is collaborating with the Multi-Partner Consortium to Expand Dementia Research in Latin America to develop a better understanding of dementia in the region with a special focus on social factors such as mistreatment.
Stefanie received her medical school training from the National University of Mexico where she completed her training in Geriatrics. She received her Internal Medicine training from La Salle University.;
Pedro Pinheiro-Chagas, PhD, studies the neural architecture and dynamics of human intelligence, focusing on symbolic cognitive systems, such as mathematics and language. His research program aims at understanding how these systems develop and decline and how we can help.
Mariah L. Pospisil, MEd, is a lifelong educator and advocate for students with dyslexia. After receiving her AB degree in Psychology from Harvard College, Mariah earned her teaching credential and Master of Education as an Education Specialist, Mild/Moderate from Notre Dame de Namur University. As a teacher, instructional coach, and school leader, Mariah focused on implementing instructional and social-emotional interventions to support students with dyslexia throughout their K–12 educational journeys.
Caroline Prioleau writes and designs content for the Memory and Aging Center and the Global Brain Health Institute. She is interested in using design and technology to share complex information and facilitate collaborations across clinical, research and non-medical groups. She also co-leads an oral history project, hear/say, that focuses on collecting personal stories about the experience of aging, dementia and caregiving.
Igor Prufer Q.C. Araujo obtained his MD degree at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He completed his neurology residency at Texas Tech University in Lubbock Texas being the chief resident in his final year of training. His current research interests include the benefits of multilingualism to cognitive reserve, the neural basis of decision making and socioeconomic factors affecting dementia care.
Pongpat Putthinun is a health economist and postdoctoral scholar in the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. He joined the Decision Lab team, led by Dr. Winston Chiong, and is currently working on a project aimed at understanding how genetic predispositions to frontotemporal dementia influence decision-making in the pre-symptomatic phase. Through neuroeconomic methods, the research seeks to identify incidents of early impaired judgment that could lead to early intervention strategies to decelerate the onset of frontotemporal dementia.
