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. 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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
Zoe is a speech-language pathologist at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in the ALBA Language Neurobiology Lab led by Dr. Marilu Gorno Tempini. Zoe has a BS degree in Cognitive Science with a specialization in neuroscience from UC San Diego and an MS degree in Speech-Language Pathology from Vanderbilt University.
Originally from Philadelphia, Iman began working at the Memory and Aging Center (MAC) following her graduation from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in Biology and Medical Sociology. While at the University of Pennsylvania, Iman worked on projects involving neuroradiology and cognitive disorders. At the MAC, Iman's primary role is as an Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator for the national CADASIL Consortium Study, an observational study designed to study the effects of CADASIL, a form of vascular dementia. Following her time at the MAC, Iman plans to pursue medical school.
