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. Zachary Miller grew up in the Washington DC metro area. He obtained an undergraduate degree double majoring in Molecular Biology and Fine Arts from Haverford College. Following this he spent two years as a research assistant at MIT’s Whitehead Institutes for Biomedical Research in Dr. Harvey Lodish’s lab. He received his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh and pursued medical internship as well as neurology residency training at the University of Washington.
Bruce L. Miller, MD, holds the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professorship in Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, directs the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and is the founding director of the Global Brain Health Institute at UCSF. In addition, he helps lead the Tau Consortium and The Bluefield Foundation, precision medicine collaborations focused on developing treatments for tauopathies and progranulin-mediated forms of frontotemporal dementia.
Laura Mitic, PhD, is the Chief Scientific Officer at the Bluefield Project to Cure Frontotemporal Dementia. Dr. Mitic holds a BA degree from Northwestern University and a doctorate degree in cell biology from Yale University. She completed postdoctoral studies at the University of California, San Francisco. She and her husband live in San Francisco with their two children.
Greg received his bachelor's degree in Microbiology from Brigham Young University where he developed a new class of influenza inhibitors. He completed his PhD degree at UCSF in Martin Kampmann's Lab. In the Kampmann lab, he studied how the V337M tau mutation perturbs differentiating iPSC-derived neurons. Greg works with the Clelland Lab at the Memory and Aging Center to develop new methods for screening nanoparticle delivery of gene editing therapies.
Nathaniel comes from Marin County and graduated from Stanford in 2018 with a degree in psychology. At Stanford he worked as a research assistant in Dr. James Gross’ lab studying the regulation of emotions in groups as well as the emotional dynamics between group members. Nathaniel also studied the effects of depression and anxiety on brain structures. At the Memory and Aging Center, he is a research coordinator in the Clinical Affective Neuroscience (CAN) Laboratory, led by Dr. Virginia Sturm.
Sydney is an Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator working alongside Dr. Tanisha Hill-Jarrett, applying 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).
Lily is a graduate of the University of San Francisco with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and minors in gerontology and music and has completed a Master of Science in gerontology at USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Her primary interests include cognition and improving the quality of life for older adults with neurodegenerative diseases.
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.
Alissa joined the Seeley Selective Vulnerability Research Laboratory in 2011 as a postdoctoral fellow. Her background is in neurodegeneration research. Alissa completed a BSc degree with honors in biomedical science in 2004 and a PhD degree in anatomy in 2009 from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where she investigated the variable pattern of cortical neuronal loss in Huntington’s disease.
Ayesha graduated from the University of Arizona with a Bsc degree in Psychological Sciences where she primarily involved herself in researching family relationships and COVID-19 tracing and public health interventions. While on campus, she was also involved in outreach through founding and leading her club, Women in Psychology.
