Gracie Recht is a postdoctoral scholar working with Gil Rabinovici, MD, and Renaud La Joie, PhD, at the UCSF Edward and Pearl Fein Memory and Aging Center, part of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences.
Her research focuses on the long-term effects of repetitive head impacts on brain health and the biological mechanisms that may link sports-related head trauma to neurodegenerative diseases. Using multimodal neuroimaging and fluid biomarkers, she studies how repeated head impacts influence amyloid and tau pathology, brain aging, and the risk of neurodegenerative disease in current and former athletes. Her work aims to advance understanding of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and related neurodegenerative diseases while helping address the longstanding underrepresentation of women in repetitive head impact research.
Before joining UCSF, Recht earned her PhD in public health with a minor in biostatistics from Indiana University, where she trained under Kei Kawata, PhD. Her doctoral research examined how lifetime exposure to repetitive head impacts affects brain structure, blood biomarkers, cognition, and mental health in middle-aged athletes.