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. Kaitlin Casaletto is a scientist-practitioner, board-certified neuropsychologist, and Associate Professor at the UC San Francisco Memory and Aging Center (MAC). She leads a research program identifying novel biobehavioral targets of dementia prevention. Her work has a particular lens towards sex differences and translational study designs that leverage proteomic and digital health approaches to identify targets of cognitive resilience to aging.
The Clelland laboratory aims to develop cures for dementia and related neurodegenerative diseases. She is focused on single-gene (monogenic) causes of frontotemporal dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, such as mutations in the C9orf72 gene. She and her team develop CRISPR gene editing approaches in relevant cell types derived from human iPSCs and are working to develop better cell model systems of disease.
Dr. Jessica de Leon received her undergraduate degrees in neuroscience and Spanish at the Johns Hopkins University and an MD with thesis degree at UCSF. She then completed a medicine internship and neurology residency at UCSF, where she served as chief resident.
Dr. Mary De May received her medical degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She completed an internship in medicine and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and subsequently did her psychiatry residency and fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. She joined the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in 2000, where she is the center’s Hellman Master Clinician and the Hellman Family Distinguished Professor of Neurology.
Dr. Geschwind received his MD and PhD degrees in neuroscience through the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He completed his internship in internal medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center, his neurology residency at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore and his fellowship in behavioral neurology at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center (MAC). He is a Professor of Neurology at the MAC.
Dr. Maria Luisa Gorno Tempini is a behavioral neurologist, currently directing the Language Neurobiology laboratory of the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and the UCSF Dyslexia Center. She also directs the state-funded Multitudes Universal Screening Project, one of the four reading difficulties risk screeners approved by a state appointed panel for use in California public schools beginning in Fall of 2025. She obtained her medical degree and clinical neurology specialty training in Italy, and has a PhD in the neuroimaging of language from University College London.
Dr. Lea Tenenholz Grinberg is a neuropathologist specializing in brain aging and associated disorders, most notably, Alzheimer’s disease and the neurological basis of sleep disturbances in neurodegenerative diseases. Currently, she is a John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Foundation Endowed Professor at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, part of the Executive Board of the Global Brain Health Institute and a member of the Medical Scientific Advisory Group for the Alzheimer’s Association.
Tanisha Hill-Jarrett, PhD, is a neuropsychologist and an assistant professor of neurology at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. Her research applies intersectionality theory to understand how psychosocial stressors and structural racism and sexism impact Black women’s cognitive aging and confer risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD).
Brandon Holmes, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Memory and Aging Center (MAC). He completed his clinical fellowship at the MAC and his post-doctoral research in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the laboratory of James A. Wells, PhD, where he studies how microglia, the innate immune cells of the central nervous system, alter their proteome in the context of neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation. Learn more about his research here.
Sarah Inkelis is an assistant professor at the Memory and Aging Center. She completed her neuropsychology postdoctoral fellowship at the UCSF Dyslexia Center after earning her doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology at the SDSU/UC San Diego Joint Doctoral Program and finishing her internship in pediatric neuropsychology at the UCLA Semel Institute. Her PhD research examined neurobehavioral outcomes of children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, with a particular emphasis on the relationships between sleep and neurodevelopment.
