Research Faculty | Alzheimer's Disease Research Center | UC Davis Health

Clinical Core Leader
Professor, Department of Neurology
farias@ucdavis.edu

Sarah Tomaszewski Farias, Ph.D. is professor and chief of Cognitive Behavioral Division in the Department of Neurology. She is a neuropsychologist with an NIH-funded research program investigating various aspects of cognitive aging including early signs of Alzheimer's disease, the effects of cognitive decline on everyday function, life course sociocultural and lifestyle factors that impact cognitive aging across diverse populations, and the development of behavioral interventions to promote cognitive and emotional health. She serves as the Clinical Core Leader in the UCD NIH-Funded Alzheimer's Disease Research Cener and directs the California Alzheimer's Disease Center of Excellence at UC Davis.

Data Management and Statistical Core Co-Leader
Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences, Division of Biostatistics
Biostatistics Co-Investigator
djharvey@ucdavis.edu

Danielle Harvey, Ph.D. is a professor in the Division of Biostatistics, Department of Public Health Sciences. She has over 20 years of experience as a collaborative biostatistician and currently leads the Data Management and Statistics Core for the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and co-leads the Statistics Core for the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. For most of her career, she has worked in the area of Alzheimer’s disease, with particular emphasis on the use of neuroimaging to identify markers of disease progression. As such, she has expertise in the analysis of complex correlated data. Harvey’s independent research focuses on deriving hypothesis-driven summaries of neuroimaging data that utilize the known structure of the brain as well as the hypothesized biology of the disease process and developing methods for comparing the performance and/or utility of biomarkers.

Data Management and Statistical Core Co-Leader
Associate Professor, Department of Neurology
bgavett@ucdavis.edu

Gavett, Ph.D., is a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist. His work employs advanced psychometric methods to promote our understanding of how cognitive abilities change during late life as a consequence of healthy aging and neurodegenerative disease. His research interests include risk and resilience factors – such as cognitive reserve, brain reserve, and brain maintenance – with an emphasis on understanding how these traits are established and maintained throughout the lifespan. His work incorporates data relevant to cognitive functioning, neuroimaging, biomarkers, personality, lifestyle variables, and more. Underlying this work is an interest in understanding, characterizing, and ameliorating health disparities in cognitive aging that affect some racial and ethnic groups more than others. Gavett is also an associate editor for Neuropsychology Review.  

Neuropathology Core Leader
Associate Professor, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Science
Neuropathology Co-Investigator
bndugger@ucdavis.edu

Brittany Dugger, Ph.D., contributes fundamental knowledge to precision medicine approaches that will aid in creating better biomarkers, therapies, and models of human diseases for all individuals. Throughout her career she has led, enabled, and enhanced many cross disciplinary projects, resulting in more than 80 peer-reviewed manuscripts and numerous private, state, and federally funded grants. In addition to running her own laboratory, she is the neuropathology core co-leader of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC), co-leader of the School of Medicine Machine Learning Working Group, and department liaison for Women in Medical and Health Sciences at UC Davis. Dugger also is involved in many national endeavors, including the College of American Pathologists Neuropathology Committee and the ADRC Neuropathology Core Steering Committee. She has extensive expertise in cross disciplinary dialog development and maintenance, data harmonization and amalgamation, mentorship, sponsorship, advocacy, and administrative execution and oversight.

Outreach, Recruitment and Education Core Leader
Associate Professor of Neurology
dkj@ucdavis.edu

David Johnson is a NIH trained, licensed clinical psychologist with specialty training in neuropsychology, gerontology and research methods. He is an expert in the assessment and treatment of mental health issues in late life, including cognitive decline due to dementia of all types. Johnson has published widely in clinical research of healthy brain aging and dementia. He lives in the East Bay of San Francisco where he is the directs the California Dementia and Diabetes Prevention Program, The Good Life Program for Healthy Aging, the Outreach, Recruitment, Engagement Core of the UC Davis Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and the Recruitment and Retention Core of the national Cooperative for Diverse Vascular Cognitive Impairment and Dementia. He is bilingual and has worked extensively with Black American and Latino communities in the United States and abroad.

Biomarker Core Leader
Professor and Director of Neuropathology, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
lwjin@ucdavis.edu

Lee-Way Jin, M.D., Ph.D., directs the Division of Neuropathology. Jin is a neuropathologist and neuroscientist with expertise in the molecular analysis of brain diseases. He is currently the principal investigator of the National Institute on Aging--funded Neuropathology Core of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at UC Davis. He is also the UC Davis principal investigator of the University of California Pediatric Neuropathology Consortium, with the mission to collect and study cells and brain tissues from patients with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, fragile X syndrome, and Rett syndrome. Jin also conducts basic science research in his laboratory. His scientific goals include identifying potential cellular and molecular therapeutic targets and designing and testing small molecule compounds specific for these targets.

Neuroimaging Core Leader
Assistant Professor, Neurology and Biomedical Engineering
apfan@ucdavis.edu

Audrey Fan, Ph.D., is an imaging physicist with experience in stroke research and co-leader of the Neuroimaging Core for the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Her lab develops novel magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) methods to measure brain physiology in cerebrovascular disease and vascular dementia. As there is large overlap between vascular risk factors and cognitive decline, Fan characterizes this risk with brain imaging biomarkers such as cerebral blood flow, oxygenation, and vascular reserve. Through new MRI and PET technologies, she aims to diagnose cerebrovascular disease and dementia earlier than ever and identify optimal therapies to improve patient quality of life.

Research Education Component Core Co-Leader
Associate Professor, Neurology
olmeyer@ucdavis.edu

Oanh Meyer, Ph.D., co-directs the Research Education Component (REC) of the ADRC. Meyer studies cognitive and mental health disparities in racial and ethnic minorities and older adults from a broad population level and at the individual level. Through her research, Meyer and her team aim to understand factors that impact dementia risk in diverse communities. 

Research Education Component Core Co-Leader
Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology
aweakley@ucdavis.edu

Alyssa Weakley, Ph.D., is clinically trained as a neuropsychologist and has research interests in aging and dementia, cognitive rehabilitation and gerontechnology. Recent research endeavors include developing and evaluating compensatory and sensing technology that assists older adults with early-stage Alzheimer's disease as well as their non-residing family caregivers who care for them. She also develops interventions focused on improving caregiving technology adoption and adherence. Weakley is committed to understanding the caregiving and receiving styles and preferences practiced by different cultural and ethnoracial groups to apply these learnings to the tools she develops, since culturally adept, person-centered caregiving tools may lead to better caregiving and downstream health outcomes.

Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology
dpbissig@ucdavis.edu

David Bissig, M.D., Ph.D., is a dementia specialist who sees patients at the UC Davis Healthy Aging Clinic and sees research participants at the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. His research focuses on ways the eye can tell us about brain health. He also created a public-domain cognitive screening tool called SATURN.

Assistant Clinical Professor
doschen@ucdavis.edu

Doris Chen, M.D., evaluates patients at the Healthy Aging Center and sees research participants at the Alzheimer Disease Research Center in the East Bay. Chen leads the Clinical Trials Unit, which completes drug trials for Alzheimer disease and related dementias.  

Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology
jmfox@ucdavis.edu

Jaclyn Fox, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist offering comprehensive neuropsychological evaluations for a wide variety of neurologic conditions including Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, mild cognitive impairment, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, traumatic brain injury, multiple sclerosis, and cancer. She also works with the UC Davis Health surgical intervention Deep Brain Stimulation Program and the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program conducing pre- and post-surgical neuropsychological evaluations. Her research focuses on cognition in a wide variety of diagnoses. Currently, she is implementing an integrative technology and behavioral modification approach to promote cognitive health and function independence in older adults.

Associate Professional Researcher
Neuroimaging Core
pmaillard@ucdavis.edu

Maillard, Ph.D., is a researcher in the Neuroimaging Core for the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Maillard seeks to better understanding trajectories of cognitive decline and brain differences in association with vascular risk. Her research strategy includes two specific emphases: analysis, by developing methods for MRI image analyses and identifying new neuroimaging biomarkers of vascular disease, and epidemiology, by studying the association of newly developed MRI derived measures with cognition.

Professor, Department of Neurology
dmmungas@ucdavis.edu

Dan Mungas, Ph.D., measures cognition in ethnically and linguistically diverse older populations and studies determinants of cognitive health and cognitive decline. His research has utilized innovative psychometric methods associated with item response theory and related latent variable modeling methods to develop sensitive measures of cognitive decline relevant to diverse older populations. He uses these measures in longitudinal studies to identify demographic, environmental, and biological variables that influence late life cognitive trajectories. In addition, Mungas is the principle investigator of the Advanced Psychometric Methods in Cognitive Aging Research conference grant that trains early career and established investigators in advanced psychometric and statistical methodology for cognitive aging research. 

Professor, Department of Neurology and Center for Mind and Brain  
jmolichney@ucdavis.edu

John Olichney, M.D., is a behavioral neurologist and dementia specialist. He served as leader or co-leader of the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center’s Clinical Core for 15 years. His research interests include electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies of memory and language processes, early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases, and other higher cognitive disorders. He directs the Cognitive Electrophysiology and Neuroimaging (CEAN) laboratory in the Center for Mind and Brain (CMB) and served as director of a United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties-accredited Fellowship on Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry in Neurodegeneration and Aging until 2022. He has expertise in dementia diagnosis, pathophysiology and the interactions between Alzheimer’s disease and vascular pathology.