staff

Piyush is a Neuroimaging Data analyst in the RabLab, with experience in medical imaging. He obtained his master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Southern California and a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from India.

Sean Coulborn is a postdoctoral researcher at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center under the mentorship of Dr. David Perry. His research focuses on improving the certainty of clinical diagnosis and predicting the pathological diagnosis in neurodegenerative diseases.

Originally from Sonoma County, Dolce attended college at UCLA, where she graduated with a degree in Psychology. While at UCLA, Dolce was a research assistant at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, studying the effects of behavioral therapy on children with autism spectrum disorder. She also served as a public speaker with the National Alliance on Mental Health, Westside LA, working to expand mental health awareness to young adults in the community.

Lana is a research coordinator in Dr. Joel Kramer’s lab working primarily on the Active Mind Clinical Trial as well as the Brain Aging Network for Cognitive Health study and the Mechanisms of Executive Decline study. She graduated with a BS degree in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior from UC Davis in June 2022

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.

Luis Martinez Roman, MD, MPH, completed his medical studies at Universidad del Rosario, Colombia. He worked in the “Cedesnid” public foundation for people with low economic resources, disabilities, and neurological diseases in Bogota, Colombia. Luis received his master's degree in Neurology from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the final year of his residency, he was selected to do a rotation in the Memory and Aging Unit at Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau in Barcelona, Spain.

Lucienne Vintaer is the program coordinator for the ALBA Language Neurobiology Lab and serves as the executive administrative assistant to principal investigator Dr. Maria Luisa Gorno Tempini. Born and raised in San Francisco, she earned her bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Psychology at Scripps College and discovered her interest in brain health while working for the University’s Disability Resource Center, supporting individuals with varying forms of neurodivergence.

Pedro Pinheiro-Chagas, PhD, studies the neural architecture and dynamics of human intelligence, focusing on symbolic cognitive systems, such as mathematics and language. His research program aims at understanding how these systems develop and decline and how we can help.
 

Hannah graduated from the University of Southern California in 2022 with a BS degree in Neuroscience. At USC, she was a research assistant at the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute using histology techniques to visualize fluorescently labeled neural circuits. She also studied the effects of sex hormones on Alzheimer’s disease as a research assistant at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Hannah has experience performing immunohistochemistry, perfusion-fixation surgery, confocal microscopy, and imageJ analysis.

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.