People

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.

Connor Dietz, MD

Behavioral Neurology Clinical Fellow

Dr. Dietz is originally from Penticton, British Columbia. He studied physiology and physics at McGill University in Montreal, where his research focused on characterizing candidate mechanosensitive ion channels using single-cell electrophysiology techniques. While at McGill, he became interested in neurology, neuropsychology, and brain-behavior relationships after reading the classic works of Drs. Wilder Penfield and Brenda Milner at the Montreal Neurological Institute.

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, PhD

Staff Research Associate

Alex is a biomedical scientist focused on neurological and psychiatric disease pathogenesis and therapeutic development. He received his BA and PhD from UC Berkeley with additional research training at UC San Francisco's Memory & Aging Center under the joint mentorship of Dr. Lea Grinberg and Dr. Daniela Kaufer. Alex's training included specialization in neuropathology, epidemiology, comparative neurology, molecular genetics, and cell biology.

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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