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.
Originally from Huntsville, Alabama, Celeste earned her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. While there, she took several philosophy courses, inspiring her interest in bioethics. Afterwards, Celeste enrolled in the Masters of Bioethics program at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her thesis research consisted of examining ethical perspectives of identity in patients who had undergone deep brain stimulation for treatment resistant depression.
Adit Friedberg, MD, is a behavioral neurologist trained in the Department of Neurology in the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. She received her medical degree from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (cum laude). She also completed a degree in Biotechnology Engineering (cum laude) from Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Adit is an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health. She is currently a research fellow at the Memory and Aging Center at UCSF.
Joanne graduated from San Francisco State University with a BS degree in microbiology and is pursuing Clinical Laboratory Science (CLS) in the Kao Lab at UC San Francisco. She also helps manage the Biospecimens Core.
Stephany graduated from UC Riverside in 2017 with a BA degree in Psychology. At UC Riverside, Stephany was a research assistant, where she helped conduct research studies in the Childhood Cognition Lab within the Psychology Department. After graduating, she held various positions focusing on research, education and serving under-resourced communities.
Stephanie joined the Seeley Selective Vulnerability Research Laboratory in October 2007 as an Associate Specialist. Her background is in sleep and circadian rhythms research, including neuroanatomy. She completed a doctorate in neurobiology (CB Saper, Harvard University), a master's in medical science (Harvard Medical School), and a postdoc focusing on narcolepsy (E Mignot, Stanford University/Howard Hughes Medical Institute).
Leslie Gaynor, PhD, is a neuropsychology postdoctoral fellow at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in the Department of Neurology. She graduated from the University of Florida in 2015 with bachelor’s degrees in Neurobiological Sciences and English. She then completed her PhD degree in Clinical Psychology (Neuropsychology) at the University of Florida in 2021, which included a predoctoral clinical internship at Emory University School of Medicine/Grady Health System in adult/geriatric neuropsychology.
Ms. Gearhart received her undergraduate degree in Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania. She began her nursing career at Johns Hopkins Hospital where she worked in acute care on Osler 4 General Medicine. Ms. Gearhart continued working in general medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center where she was nurse manager. She received her master's degree in Nursing Administration at UCSF and is certified as a Gerontological Clinical Nurse Specialist by the American Nurses Association Credentialing Center.
Rose George is a product manager and oversees the building of solutions and systems to support the Memory and Aging Center’s goal of providing model care for patients and their families, finding innovative ways to understand and hopefully cure these neurodegenerative diseases, and reaching out to the wider community to raise awareness about these diseases of aging.
Before joining the MAC, George worked in Silicon Valley, successfully launching and growing hardware and software products. She also brings extensive expertise in program and integration management.
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.
