People

Bruce Miller, MD

A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professor in Neurology
Director, Memory and Aging Center
Memory and Aging Center

Bruce L. Miller, MD, holds the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professorship in Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, directs the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and is a director of the Global Brain Health Institute. He is the principal investigator of the NIH-sponsored Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and program project grant on frontotemporal dementia.

Jill Ostrem, MD

Medical Director, UCSF Movement Disorders and Neuromodulation Center
Professor Clinical Neurology
Neurology

Stanley Prusiner, MD

Director, Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases
Professor, Department of Neurology
Neurology

Stanley B. Prusiner, MD, is a professor of neurology and biochemistry and director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at UCSF. While at the university, Dr. Prusiner discovered an unprecedented class of pathogens that he named prions. Prions are infectious proteins that cause neurodegenerative diseases in animals and humans.

Dr. Prusiner’s contributions to scientific research have been internationally recognized with numerous prizes including the Richard Lounsbery Award, the Albert Lasker Award and the Nobel Prize.

Ian Bledsoe, MD

Asst Clinical Professor
Neurology

Dr. Ian Bledsoe is a neurologist who cares for patients who have Parkinson's disease, tremors, ataxia, dystonia and other movement disorders. His treatments include medications, botulinum toxin injections and a surgical procedure called deep brain stimulation.

Bledsoe has a special interest in dystonia, a disorder that causes involuntary movements, cramps and abnormal postures. He particularly focuses on a form of the condition that affects musicians and other patients whose work requires repetitive movements.

Adam Boxer, MD, PhD

Professor in Residence
Memory and Aging Center

Adam L. Boxer, MD, PhD is the Endowed Professor in Memory and Aging in the Department of Neurology, Weill Institute of Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He received his MD and PhD from the New York University Medical Center Medical Scientist Training Program, completed a Neurology Residency at Stanford and a Neurobehavior Fellowship at UCSF. Dr. Boxer directs the Neurosciences Clinical Research Unit and the Alzheimer’s Disease and Frontotemporal Degeneration (FTD) Clinical Trials Program at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center.

Ethan Brown, MD

Clinical Fellow
Neurology

Jessica de Leon, MD

Assistant Adjunct Professor
Memory and Aging Center

I am a behavioral neurologist with expertise in the evaluation and diagnosis of patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), and Alzheimer’s dementia. My research program aims to understand how bilingualism, language typology, and sociocultural factors affect the clinical, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging findings in neurodegenerative diseases. The underlying goal of my work is to improve dementia diagnosis in communities of different language and sociocultural backgrounds.

Fanny Elahi, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor
Memory and Aging Center

Fanny Elahi is a board-certified neurologist with specific expertise in the evaluation and management of patients with cognitive and behavioral disorders due to degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. She completed her bachelor's degree at Columbia University, her MD from Icahn School of Medicine, at Mount Sinai, and her DPhil from Oxford University.

Rosalie Gearhart, RN, MS, CS

Administrative Nurse
Memory and Aging Center

Michael Geschwind, MD, PhD

Prof of Clinical Neurology
Memory and Aging Center

Dr. Geschwind received his M.D.and Ph.D. in neuroscience through the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He completed his internship in internal medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center, his neurology residency at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore and his fellowship in behavioral neurology at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center (MAC).

Jason Gestwicki, PhD

Professor
Pharmaceutical Chemistry

The Gestwicki Laboratory is interested in molecular chaperones, protein homeostasis and protein misfolding disorders. To approach the big questions in this area, we use a chemical biology strategy that includes the discovery and optimization of new chemical inhibitors. We use these chemical probes to acutely perturb chaperone functions, revealing how these systems normally protect from cancer and neurodegeneration.

Marilu Gorno Tempini, MD, PhD

Professor in Residence
Memory and Aging Center

Dr. Maria Luisa Gorno Tempini is a behavioral neurologist, currently directing the Language Neurobiology laboratory of the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and serving as the neurology lead of the UCSF Dyslexia Center. She obtained her medical degree and clinical neurology specialty training in Italy, and has a PhD in the neuroimaging of language from University College London.

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