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.
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.
Mihovil is an associate specialist in the Grinberg Lab from the University of Tubingen in Germany. He is a psychiatrist and completed a PhD degree in neuroanatomy of the dopaminergic system. Mihovil has been working in finding out how certain hypothalamic nuclei degenerate in tauopathies and contribute to sleep dysfunction.
Julia graduated from the University of California in Berkeley in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Molecular and Cell Biology, with an emphasis in neurobiology and a minor in disability studies. As an undergraduate, she volunteered as a research assistant at Cortica, a center for advanced therapies for autism and neurodevelopment, and worked part-time at UCSF in the Neural Connectivity Lab. Julia is passionate about equitable healthcare and plans to apply to medical school to pursue a career as a physician.
Brittany is a data analyst assisting Dr. Jet Vonk in research on primary progressive aphasia and neurolinguistics. She received her Master of Science degree in health data science from the University of New Hampshire. Previously, she graduated from the University of Massachusetts with an undergraduate degree in psychology. Before transitioning to tech, she worked with at-risk youth, special needs and pre-k children.
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.
Lisa Morse is a Clinical Nurse at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center clinic and is pursuing a master’s degree from the University of California, San Francisco. She is a Certified Neuroscience Registered Nurse by the American Board of Neuroscience Nurses.
As a Research Assistant, Nidhi assists with processing and analysis of amyloid and tau PET scans and supports ongoing studies at the MAC that require PET processing.
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.
Mei graduated from UC Berkeley in May 2022 with a degree in Cognitive Science and a minor in Computer Science. As an undergrad, she worked as a research assistant in the Gopnik Cognitive Development Lab, studying language acquisition and causal reasoning in children, and the Wilbrecht Neuroscience Lab, using calcium imaging to study the neural correlates of learning in juvenile and adult mice.
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.
