People
Principal Investigator
Suzee Lee, MD, Principal Investigator
Dr. Suzee Lee is an Associate Professor of Neurology, the Director of the Dementia Imaging Genetics Lab, and the Director of the Visiting Scholars Program at the UCSF Weill Institute of Neuroscience’s Memory and Aging Center. Dr. Lee is a behavioral neurologist who received a BA degree in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard College and an MD degree from the McGill Faculty of Medicine. She completed her internship at the Brown University Alport School of Medicine, neurology residency at Mount Sinai Hospital, and a fellowship in behavioral neurology with Dr. Bruce Miller at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center.
Dr. Lee is a principal investigator on studies that develop neuroimaging techniques to improve the diagnosis and monitoring of preclinical and early-stage genetic neurodegenerative diseases including frontotemporal dementia and other tau-spectrum disorders. Her goals are to identify the influence of genetic variants on neurodegenerative syndromes and to integrate neuroimaging and biofluid markers to create frameworks for modeling neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disease trajectories. Outside the lab, she cares for patients in her clinic at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center.
Current members
Taru Flagan, PhD, Research Scientist
Taru received a bachelor of science degree in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California, San Diego and completed a PhD in psychology in the Self-Regulation Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin in 2016. She joined the Dementia Imaging Genetics Lab in 2017 to support neuroimaging methods for understanding the underlying biology of genetic variants of frontotemporal dementia.
Rowan Heffelfinger, BA, Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator
Rowan graduated from Middlebury College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology in May, 2024. At Middlebury, as a research assistant to Dr. Jamie McCallum, she conducted research on unionization in healthcare settings. In 2023, Rowan worked as a clinical research assistant at the Centre for Cardiovascular Innovation where she researched the use of the Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) device for treating severe symptomatic aortic stenosis. She joined the Dementia Imaging Genetics Lab in 2024 as an assistant clinical research coordinator.
Jolina Lombardi, PhD, Post Doctoral Scholar
Jolina received her master’s degree in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. For her PhD degree in clinical neuropsychology, she joined the German FTLD consortium at the Department of Neurology in Ulm, Germany to examine cognitive features and neuroimaging biomarkers in frontotemporal dementia with a focus on primary progressive aphasia. She joined the Dementia Imaging Genetics Lab in 2021 to get a deeper understanding of the brain’s connectivity and its systematic degeneration in genetic frontotemporal dementia.
Youjin Jung, PhD, Post Doctoral Scholar
Youjin received her bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and Home Economics Education and a master’s degree in brain and cognitive engineering from Korea University in South Korea. Youjin then completed her PhD in Psychology at Wayne State University in 2023, where her research focused on the relationship between plasma NfL and multimodal neuroimaging markers in older adults with Alzheimer's disease. Youjin joined the Dementia Imaging Genetics Lab in February 2024 to investigate potential multimodal neuroimaging biomarkers for early detection and monitoring of frontotemporal dementia.
Alumni
Andrea Gorham Vargas, Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator
Andrea graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor of arts degree in Biology & Society in May 2022. At Cornell, she worked in the Liu Lab to study developmental processes using the bone morphogenetic protein pathway in C. elegans. Later, she worked with Dr. Hooman Kamel, at Weill Cornell, on the relationship between stroke and pre-existing atrial fibrillation after surgery. She currently serves on Dr. Lee’s lab as an assistant clinical research coordinator.
Liwen Zhang, PhD, Post Doctoral Scholar
Liwen received her PhD in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Groningen in 2016. After that, she worked as a research fellow at the National University of Singapore and Duke-NUS Medical School jointly, where she worked on Alzheimer’s disease using neuroimaging methods. Liwen joined the Dementia Imaging Genetics Lab in 2019, trying to understand the underlying brain mechanisms of frontotemporal dementia, and developing multimodal neuroimaging markers for early disease detection and disease progression monitoring.
Suvi Häkkinen, PhD, Post Doctoral Scholar
Suvi received her PhD from the Department of Psychology and Logopedics at the University of Helsinki in 2018, where she completed her dissertation on the functional organization of human auditory cortex during active auditory tasks. She joined the Memory and Aging Center in 2018 to deepen her understanding of various neuroimaging methods and their relevance to clinical research.
Stephanie Chu, Research Associate
Stephanie graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a bachelor's degree in neuroscience. She worked as a research assistant in the Laboratory of Brain, Behavior, and Pharmacology at the Semel Institute at UCLA, where she assisted Dr. Aimee Hunter and Dr. Andrew Leuchter with research on depression and related psychiatric disorders using EEG data. Stephanie joined the Dementia Imaging Genetics Lab in 2017, where she assists Dr. Suzee Lee with neuroimaging studies examining the role of genetic risk factors and mutations in frontotemporal dementia. She is currently pursuing her PhD in neuroscience at UCLA.
Peter Mu-N Liu, MD, Visiting Scholar
Peter is a Visiting Scholar at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. He obtained his MD from the National Defense Medical Center in Taipei, Taiwan, and is a psychiatrist at the Taipei Veteran General Hospital. Dr. Liu's research focuses on the field of geriatric psychiatry, such as geriatric depression and cognitive aging. He joined the Lee Lab on December 1, 2017 to study neuroimaging in neurodegenerative disease.
Janet La, Visiting Scholar
Janet is currently a medical student at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014 with a bachelor's degree in molecular and cell biology. At the Memory and Aging Center, Janet studied new genetic mutations implicated in dementia and their role in cerebral atrophy using structural neuroimaging techniques.
Silvia Russo, MD, Visiting Neurology Resident
Silvia is a Visiting Scholar at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. She obtained her MD from the San Raffaele University in Milan, Italy, and is a Neurology Resident at the University of Milan, Italy. She joined the Lee Lab in August 2016. She is learning to apply voxel-based morphometry and resting-state fMRI to understand the influence of genetics on the early stage of frontotemporal dementia. Silvia plans to pursue neurology and neuroscience training in the USA. Her favorite part of the brain is the prefrontal cortex.
Alainna Brennan Brown, Research Associate
Alainna is currently a medical student at the University of Washington. She assisted Dr. Suzee Lee with neuroimaging studies of frontotemporal dementia, particularly voxel-based morphometry and resting-state fMRI analyses of cases associated with the C9ORF72 hexanucleotide expansion and with progranulin mutations. Alainna completed her bachelors degree at Washington University in St. Louis in neuroscience and biomedical physics and worked as an undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Kurt Thoroughman's Neural Computation and Motor Behavior Lab. Her favorite brain region is primary motor cortex.
Ethan Geier, Post Doctorate
Ethan graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in molecular and cell biology and earned a PhD in 2013 from the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco in the laboratory of Dr. Kathleen M. Giacomini. His dissertation work focused on characterizing how membrane transporter proteins influence drug penetration across the blood-brain barrier. After graduate school, Ethan co-founded Apricity Therapeutics with Dr. Giacomini to create safer, more effective therapies for pediatric diseases using technology he helped develop during his dissertation work. Ethan joined the Memory and Aging Center in 2015 to study how genetic variation contributes to the development of neurodegenerative diseases.
Ana Sias, Research Associate
Ana graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in psychology. As an undergraduate she worked as a research assistant in Dr. Richard Ivry's Cognition and Action Lab studying motor inhibition during response preparation. Ana joined the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in 2014 and assisted Dr. Suzee Lee in neuroimaging analyses of patients with atypical dementias. Her favorite brain region is the hypothalamus. She is currently pursuing her PhD in neuroscience at UCLA.
Anna Khazenzon, Research Associate
Anna assisted Dr. Suzee Lee with neuroimaging studies evaluating the role genetic risk factors play in atypical dementias. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2012 with a degree in cognitive neuroscience. As an undergraduate, she worked in Dr. Matthew Walker's Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab investigating the role of reward in memory using fMRI and in Dr. Damian O. Elias' Animal Communication and Behavior Lab studying courtship plasticity in the male jumping spider. Anna is currently a PhD student advised by Dr. Anthony Wagner at the Stanford Memory Lab at Stanford University.
Heidi Foo, Visiting Scholar
Heidi was a visiting research scholar from the National Neuroscience Institute in Singapore, where she used neuroimaging techniques to investigate the neurobiological processes underlying Parkinson's disease and dementia. At the Memory and Aging Center, Heidi learned seed-based resting state functional neuroimaging techniques using SPM, and made observations in clinical research evaluations. Heidi plans to pursue a PhD in neuroscience.
Anna Vidovszky, Research Intern
Anna worked as a volunteer in the Lee lab. She is an undergraduate student at the University of San Francisco working on her psychology degree with a neuroscience minor. She worked as a research assistant in Dr. Wendy Mendes' Emotion, Health, and Psychophysiology Lab as a freshman. Anna plans on applying to medical school. Her favorite brain region is the amygdala.
Eena Kosik, Research Intern
Eena worked as a volunteer in the Lee lab. She is an undergraduate student at University of California, Berkeley and has been a research assistant in Dr. Robert Levenson's Psychophysiology Lab. She is extremely fascinated by the mind, particularly scientific approaches to consciousness.
Michael Neylan, Research Associate
Michael graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2011 with a degree in psychology. He began working at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in 2012 investigating frontotemporal dementia with Dr. Bruce Miller and Dr. Adam Boxer. In 2013, Michael began working with Dr. Suzee Lee researching genetic variants of frontotemporal dementia. Michael plans to pursue a career in medicine.
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