REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - Key Persons
Dr. Kao is a neuroscientist and physician interested in understanding the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative disorders, focusing on how aging and disease impact lysosome function and protein homeostasis.
As a Professor in the UCSF Department of Neurology and a John Douglas French Foundation Endowed Professor, Dr. Kao oversees her lab at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. She has expertise in biochemistry, cell biology, molecular neuroscience, and the biology of aging. She has additional training in kinase signaling cascades, membrane trafficking and genetics of neurodegenerative disease. She co-directs the UCSF Alzheimer Disease Research Center's (ADRC) Biomarker Core with Dr. Yokoyama. She has received the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation Distinguished Investigator Award in Neurodegenerative Diseases, the Glenn Award for Research in the Biological Mechanisms of Aging and the Derek Denny-Brown Young Neurological Scholar Award.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Leader
- Associate Professor, Psychiatry
Dr. Karch is a leader in neurogenomics and stem cell models of tauopathy, focused on understanding the molecular drivers of Alzheimer's disease, Frontotemporal dementia, and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Dr. Karch is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University in St Louis (WashU). She established a cell bank of fibroblasts, iPSCs, and genome edited iPSC lines from deeply clinically phenotyped and genetically defined aged cohorts. Dr. Karch serves as the Associate Director for the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network, the Biomarker Core leader of the Knight ADRC at WashU, an investigator with the Tau Consortium and the Chan Zuckerberg Neurodegenerative Challenge Network. She has received the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer's Disease (DIAD) Young Investigator Award.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor, Neurology
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor, Neurology
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Associate Professor, Neuroscience / University of Kentucky College
- Professor
Dr. Lee is a professor in the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, and Co-Director of the Research Education Component for the UK-Alzheimer's Disease Research Center of the Department of Neuroscience. While an associate professor in Taneja University of South Florida, he became the first founding faculty member in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the Director of Neurodegenerative Science, and the William Saunders Endowed Chair in Geriatric Pharmacotherapy.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Dr. Southworth is a structural biologist focused on determining mechanisms of protein homeostasis and misfolding in neurodegenerative disease pathways involving essential molecular machines and chaperone proteins.
Dr. Southworth became an associate professor in the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) under the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. He has received multiple awards for his research, including the Top Scientist Development Award from the American Heart Association and the New Investigator Award from the Alzheimer's Association.
Job Titles:
- Professor, Biochemistry and Biophysics
Dr. Agard is a structural biophysicist focused on elucidating the mechanisms of assisted folding by the Hsp90 molecular chaperone system and the mechanisms of microtubule nucleation.
Dr. Agard is a Professor in the UCSF Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry. He was the founding Director of the California Institute for Bioengineering, Biotechnology and Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3) and has been instrumental in developing methods for SAXS, 3D deconvolution, structured illumination light microscopies, and automated cryo-electron tomography, among others. His work has been recognized by the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Assistant Professor, Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Dr. Gennatas is a neuroscientist focused on the development of advanced machine learning methods to address the challenges inherent in basic biomedical research and clinical predictive modeling.
Dr. Gennatas is an Assistant Professor in the UCSF Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. He is also a member of the Science and Technology Pillar of the Center for Intelligent Imaging at the UCSF Department of Radiology. He co-developed five novel machine learning algorithms and have built a comprehensive machine learning platform which is used for algorithm research, applied data analysis, and teaching. He serves as a mentor to researchers and clinicians on machine learning methods for biomedical data analysis.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Associate Professor, Neurology
Dr. Yokoyama is a geneticist and neuroscientist who is interested in understanding how variation across the genome contributes to changes in structure and function as the brain ages.
Dr. Yokoyama is an Associate Professor in the UCSF Department of Neurology and in Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, and a Mary Oakley Foundation Endowed Professor in Neurodegeneration. She has expertise in neurogenetics, genomics, transcriptomics, neuroimaging, statistics, bioinformatics, and clinical research of neurodegenerative disease. In addition, Dr. Yokoyama co-directs the UCSF Alzheimer Disease Research Center's (ADRC) Biomarker Core with Dr. Kao and is a faculty member in the Global Brain Health Institute. Dr. Yokoyama was recognized for her role in mentoring by receiving the inaugural Alzheimer's Association Excellence in Neuroscience Mentoring Award.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Professor, Neuroscience
Dr. Jankowsky's research focuses on understanding factors that influence Alzheimer's disease and testing experimental approaches for treatment in mouse models of amyloid and tauopathy.
She serves on the Alzheimer's Association International Research Grant Program Council and the BrightFocus Foundation Scientific Review Committee, and is the outgoing chair of the NIH Cellular and Molecular Neurodegeneration (CMND) Study Section. Dr. Jankowsky has received multiple awards for her research, including the NARSAD Young Investigator Award, the NIH Director's New Innovator Award, and the Alzheimer's Association Zenith Fellows Award.