Lab Members
William W. Seeley, MD - Principal Investigator
Dr. Seeley attended medical school at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), where he first encountered patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) in 1999, during a research elective with Bruce Miller. He then completed a neurology residency at Harvard Medical School, training at the Massachusetts General and Brigham & Women's Hospitals. Returning to UCSF for a Behavioral Neurology fellowship, with Bruce Miller, Dr. Seeley developed expertise in the differential diagnosis and treatment of patients with neurodegenerative disease. Struck by the focality of these illnesses, he began to question how events at the molecular level could target small subsets of the brain's more than 20 billion neurons. This biological problem, referred to as selective vulnerability, has become the primary focus of Dr. Seeley’s research. For more information about our recent research, click here.
Lea T. Grinberg, MD, PhD
Dr. Grinberg is a neuropathologist specializing in brain aging and associated disorders. In 2003, Dr. Grinberg, along with multidisciplinary colleagues, founded a brain bank in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which has developed into an extremely prolific and highly regarded institution. She received her Ph.D in 2006, studying the neuropathology of frontotemporal lobar degeneration. From 2007 to 2009, Dr. Grinberg acquired expertise in neuroanatomy and in the use of state-of-the-art methods for tridimensional brain reconstruction. This knowledge is being utilized for studying the neuropathological counterparts of common MRI findings in the elderly, which are still based on assumption. In addition, Dr. Grinberg has a special interest in the brainstem, and her most recent work has focused on this brain area. Currently, Dr. Grinberg is the P.I of a project funded by the Alzheimer's Association to perform a multi-ethnic neuropathological comparison of patients with Alzheimer's disease.
Stephanie E. Gaus, PhD, MMSc
Stephanie joined the Seeley lab in October 2007 as an Associate Specialist. Her background is in sleep and circadian rhythms research, including neuroanatomy. She completed a doctorate in neurobiology (CB Saper, Harvard University), a master's in medical science (Harvard Medical School), and a postdoc focusing on narcolepsy (E Mignot, Stanford University/Howard Hughes Medical Institute). In the Seeley lab, Stephanie is helping to characterize von Economo neurons in health and disease. Using immunohistochemical and molecular biological techniques, Stephanie is exploring the normal and pathological neuroanatomy and pathology of these neurons.
Manu Sidhu, BS
Manu joined the lab as a research associate in 2007. She helps conduct
human neuropathological experiments and assists with brain banking.
Kim Tran, BS
Kim joined the group in August 2009 as a Staff Research Associate. Kim comes to the lab with 17 years experience as a Clinical Research Coordinator at the UCSF School of Dentistry, Preventive, Restorative Dental and Orofacial Sciences. Her duties support the lab’s research efforts in neurodegenerative diseases, by performing diagnostic neurohistology techniques and brain banking.
Helen Juan Zhou, PhD
Helen joined the Seeley lab in October 2008 as a post-doctoral fellow. Her background is in structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging analyses, including structure segmentation, activation detection, and connectivity inference. She received a B.Eng. degree with First Class Honors (accelerated program (3.5 years)) in 2003 and a Ph.D. degree in neuroimaging in 2008 from School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Her current research interests focus on developing statistical or machine learning techniques for MRI/fMRI/DTI analyses and multi-modality fusion. The objective is to determine aberrant network connectivity, functional and structural, with correlated early stage FTD and AD symptoms.
Efstathios (Stathis) D. Gennatas, MBBS AICSM
Stathis joined the lab in fall 2008 as an Asst. Specialist to work on neuroimaging. He graduated from medical school at Imperial College London in June 2008 with an MBBS (Medicine) and a BSc in Psychology & Psychiatry.
Former Lab Members
Baris Genc, Ph.D.
Baris joined the lab in October 2008 as a supervisor. He received his Ph.D. in Developmental Neuroscience from the laboratory of Reha Erzurumlu in LSUHSC in New Orleans, LA, and did postdoctoral research on neocortex development in the laboratory of Louis Reichardt in UCSF. In Seeley lab, Baris is helping to characterize the neuroanatomy and physiology of the von Economo neurons, focusing on neurodevelopmental signaling molecules.
Richard Crawford, B.S.
Rich joined the lab as a research associate in 2006. Rich has developed
extensive expertise in acquisition and analysis of structural and functional
imaging data. He organizes and performs these analyses and interacts with
members of collaborating research groups.
Marcelo Macedo, B.S. and Eun-Joo (E.J.) Kim, M.D., worked together on VEN selective vulnerability in FTD. Marcelo has returned for post-baccalaureate premedical studies and EJ has returned to South Korea to work as a neurologist specializing in dementia.
Medical Students
Drs. Danielle Carlin and Carolina Court each completed one-year medical student research fellowships in the lab, studying VEN selective vulnerability. Both are now residents in psychiatry. Iris Ma (UCSF 3rd year medical student) and Dean Sasaki (UCSD undergrad senior) completed summer research fellowships.
Collaborators
DeArmond Neuropathology Research Laboratory, UCSF
Greicius Neuroimaging Laboratory, Stanford University
Allman Lab, California Insitute of Technology
Geschwind Neurogenetics Lab, UCLA
