Angkustsiri Lab Staff

Principal Investigator
Dr. Angkustsiri is the principal investigator of the lab. She is a board certified Developmental Behavioral Pediatrician (DBP) with expertise in neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) including Down syndrome, 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q), autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and fragile X syndrome. She received her BA from Stanford University and completed medical school at NYU School of Medicine. After pediatric residency training at Children’s Hospital and Research Center at Oakland, she came to UC Davis for fellowship training in Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics. After joining the faculty in Pediatrics and the MIND Institute, she completed additional research training through the Mentored Clinical Research Training Program and was a KL2 scholar. She has over 10 years of experience with clinical trials in neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder, fragile X syndrome, and Down syndrome.

Staff Research Associate
Nadia Abdelnur is a Staff Research Associate at the UC Davis MIND Institute. She received her Bachelor’s in Psychology with a minor in Counseling and Social Change from San Diego State University in 2018. She works as a coordinator in Dr. Kathleen Angkustsiri’s lab studying Down Syndrome and ADHD. She also works as a transcriber in Dr. Leonard Abbeduto's Laboratory on Language Development in Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

Senior Clinical Research Coordinator
Erika Bickel is a Senior Clinical Research Coordinator and a Society of Clinical Research Associates (SOCRA) certified CCRP. She has experience in both sponsor and investigator initiated clinical trials in pediatric neurodevelopmental disorders including autism and Fragile X syndrome. Erika has worked at the MIND on multiple research studies and clinical trials since 2011 and is excited to be involved in this new project and help provide institutional and regulatory support for the clinical trial.

Clinical Research Coordinator
Danielle Ponzini is the coordinator for the Downs Syndrome and ADHD study at the MIND Institute. She received her Bachelors of Science in both Psychobiology and Cellular and Molecular Biology from UC Davis in 2005. In 2006, she started working as an Assistant Community Health Representative for an autism focused social and behavioral study at the MIND. She quickly moved into a coordinator position where she stayed with the study for 11 years. She left in 2017 to work at UCLA, in the Radiology department, coordinating for a hospital program focused on quality control and research in imaging for abdominal cancer. Two years later, she returned to UC Davis gaining experience working in clinical trials for Neurology. However, she is now happy to be back with her MIND family working on this clinical trial and Downs Syndrome.