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.
Liya Rabkina is a licensed and board-certified genetic counselor at the Memory and Aging Center. She graduated from Northwestern University's master’s program in genetic counseling in 2020 and became board-certified later that same year. In 2024, Liya finished a research fellowship through a collaboration between Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania, while also earning a master's certificate focused on advancing research training for genetic counselors. She has experience in oncology and preimplantation genetic testing (infertility genetics).
San-Hae is a postdoctoral researcher at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center under the mentorship of Dr. Claire Clelland. His research focuses on developing delivery systems for CRISPR-based therapies to treat neurodegenerative diseases.
Rowan graduated from Middlebury College in May 2024 with a major in Sociology and a minor in Global Health. She joined the UCSF Memory and Aging Center (MAC) in June 2024 as a clinical research coordinator in the Dementia Imaging Genetics Lab led by Dr. Suzee Lee, where she coordinates a study investigating the neurodevelopment of children from families with a history of frontotemporal dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
Maison Abu Raya received her medical degree from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 2014. Maison completed her neurology residency at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera, Israel and passed the Israeli Neurology board exams with honors in 2019. She continued as an attending neurologist at the neurology department. In 2021, Maison joined the Stroke and Cognition Clinic at Rambam Health Care Campus as an attending physician and clinical fellow.
Ariel joined the Yokoyama Lab at the Memory and Aging Center in February 2024 as a Staff Research Associate. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her bachelor’s degree in English and in Molecular and Cellular Biology. Ariel has experience assisting with research into the effects of environmental air pollution on neurodegenerative disease, as well as working in a clinical pathology setting; she is interested in learning more about neurogenetics.
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.
