Lea Grinberg, MD, PhD

Principal Investigator
Professor
Neurology

Dr. Lea Tenenholz Grinberg is a neuropathologist specializing in brain aging and associated disorders, most notably, Alzheimer's and neurological basis of sleep disturbances in neurodegenerative diseases. Currently, she is a Full Professor and a John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation Endowed Professor at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, part of the Executive Board of the Global Brain Health Institute and a member of the Medical Scientific Advisory Group for the Alzheimer Association. She is also a Professor of Pathology at the University of Sao Paulo.

Alexander Ehrenberg

Staff Research Associate
Neurology

Alex started off in the neuropathology core at UCSF’s Memory and Aging Center in 2013 under the mentorship of Prof. Lea T. Grinberg. There, he developed interests in the factors that influence selective vulnerability underlying early Alzheimer’s disease stages and associated neuropsychiatric manifestations. Now a Ph.D. Candidate at UC Berkeley, he is co-advised by Prof. Grinberg and Prof. Daniela Kaufer and continues his focus on neurodegenerative disease vulnerability.

Tia Lamore

Staff Research Associate

Tia graduated from UC Berkeley(2020) after completing a dual degree in Integrative Biology and Molecular Environmental Biology. She started her research journey in 2018 as a research assistant at the Grinberg Lab practicing various wet lab techniques and focusing on the Locus coeruleus' role as a biomarker for AD. She continued as a Staff Research Associate at the Grinberg Lab in 2021 working with computer modeling techniques, postmortem histology, and MRI neuroimages with a focus on the brainstem.

Wing Hung Lee

Staff Research Associate

Wenda joined the Grinberg lab in March 2015 to support the group's efforts in researching brain aging and associated disorders. Apart from assisting the management of data bank, Wenda also helps in wet lab, processing brain tissue. She intends to continue working in the field of medical research, particularly in the specialty of brain disease.

Song Hua Li

Histotechnologist
Neurology

I graduated from UC Davis with B.S Degree in Biotechnology. Prior joining the Grinberg Lab at the Memory and Aging Center, I worked at the Brain Tumor Biorepository Tissue Core at the Department of Neurosurgery UCSF, where I assisted in clinical trials and research studies for CNS tumors using histology and immunohistochemistry techniques. I am looking forward to exploring the histotechnology field more and applying these techniques for Alzheimer’s diseases studies. 

Ian Oh

Staff Research Associate

Ian joined the Grinberg Lab in the Fall of 2018 as an undergraduate research assistant due to his interest in neurodegeneration, following years of research experience in behavioral and molecular neuroscience. After graduating from UC Berkeley in 2021 with a degree in Molecular and Cell Biology and Data Science, he continued his work at the lab as a full-time staff research associate.

Felipe Pereira, PhD

Specialist
Neurology

Felipe is a Bioinformatician with a Computer Science background. He received his Ph.D. degree at Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 2019. In his Ph.D. thesis, he studied host-pathogen interaction in important zoonotic fish-pathogenic bacteria. He had experience as a teacher assistant in Programming Languages and Software Engineering and he worked in the National Reference Laboratory of the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture using different types of omics technologies, such as transcriptomics and proteomics.

Shima Rastegarpouyani, PhD

Postdoctoral Scholar
Neurology

Shima is a Neuroscientist with a background in cell and molecular biology, having completed her PhD at McGill University, Canada in 2022. Her doctoral research focused on the brain's neural circuits related to pain perception. Intrigued by the brain's complex wiring, she explored the development of these circuits and their role in neurodegenerative diseases.

Liara Rizzi, PhD, MSc

Postdoctoral Scholar
Neurology

Dr. Liara Rizzi received her PhD and MSc in Medicine: Medical Sciences in Brazil. After her PhD, she started as a Postdoctoral fellow at Unicamp, SP, Brazil.  She joined the Grinberg Lab as a Postdoctoral employee in the year 2023. Since the beginning of her academic career, she has been working on biomarkers related to neurodegenerative diseases, especially Alzheimer's disease. Her academic research projects mainly focus on the detection of altered proteins in biofluids such as cerebrospinal fluid, plasma and serum.

Abhijit Satpati, PhD

Postdoc Scholar - Employee
Neurology

Dr. Satpati received his Master of Science (Zoology) and Ph.D. (Zoology) degrees from Bangalore University, India. His Ph.D. thesis was on the neuroprotective potential of endurance exercise and grape seed polyphenols, emphasizing the role of oxidative stress-associated changes in the expression of the muscarinic cholinergic receptor (m1) across different subfields of the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex in aging rats. He is particularly interested to understand the molecular mechanisms associated with selective neuronal vulnerability.

Mahsa Shanaki Bavarsad, PhD

Postdoc Scholar - Employee
Neurology

I received my Ph.D. degree from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain.  My Ph.D. thesis was about the effects of CNS local production of IL-10 on neuroprotection and the inflammatory response (microglial activation and leukocyte recruitment) associated with a traumatic brain injury, by generating a new transgenic animal that overproduces this cytokine under the control of the GFAP promoter on astrocytes.

Alexander Soloviev

Staff Research Associate

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