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.
Alissa joined the laboratory in 2011 as a post-doctoral fellow. Her background is in neurodegeneration research. Alissa completed a BSc degree with honors in biomedical science and a PhD degree in anatomy from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where she investigated the variable pattern of cortical neuronal loss in Huntington’s disease. In the Seeley lab, she is investigating the selective vulnerability of von Economo neurons (VENs) in frontotemporal dementia.
Sarat Vatsavayai received an MSc degree in Human Genetics from Andhra University, India. He then did his doctoral work in the field of Huntington’s disease at the Open University, UK, where he was charactering a novel mouse model and was trying to find out if DNA repeat instability could modify disease progression. In July 2013, he joined Dr. Seeley’s lab and is studying the molecular basis of C9ORF72 mutation in frontotemporal dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Dr. Spina received his medical degree from the University of Catania, Italy. He completed a neurology residency at the University of Siena, Italy from which he also obtained his doctorate degree on mechanisms of neurodegeneration. He was trained in neuropathology of dementia syndromes at the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center, Indianapolis in the laboratory of Dr. Bernardino Ghetti. Later, he completed an internship in internal medicine and a neurology residency at Indiana University. Dr. Spina’s research focuses on the clinicopathologic and genetic correlations in neurodegenerative dementia syndromes, with a special interest on frontotemporal lobar degeneration. He has been awarded the Best Young Investigator Award from the European Confederation of Neuropathological Societies (Euro-CNS) and the Hellenic Society of Neuropathology.
Norbert Lee joined the lab as a Staff Research Associate in 2010. He assists with brain banking and other histology technician responsibilities.
Sarah Kaufman, MD, PhD - Memory and Aging Center Research Fellow
Sarah Kaufman received her undergraduate degree in Molecular and Cell Biology, with a focus in Neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley. She completed her MD/PhD through Washington University in St. Louis MSTP. Her graduate research focused on tau aggregation and tau strain biology in the laboratory of Marc Diamond. After completing her dual degree she began Neurology residency at the University of California, San Francisco. After graduation from residency, she will begin a research fellowship through the Memory and Aging Center, with joint mentorship in the Seeley and Kampmann laboratories. Her ongoing research interests include understanding the mechanisms that underlie selective vulnerability in frontotemporal dementia and related neurodegenerative diseases.
Sevinç Jakab, PhD - Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuropathology
Sevinç joined the Seeley lab as a postdoctoral scholar in October 2023. She completed her B.Sc. degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Boğaziçi University in Turkey. She then moved to Germany, where she earned her M.Sc. degree in Developmental and Stem Cell Biology from Heidelberg University. Her Master's thesis focused on establishing culture conditions for circulating tumor cells from breast cancer patients in the lab of Andreas Trumpp at the German Cancer Research Center. Driven by an interest in neuroscience, Sevinç pursued a Ph.D. in the laboratory of Joachim Wittbrodt at Heidelberg University, concentrating on the role of glycosylation during retinal development. Her Ph.D. thesis demonstrated that hypomorphic mutations in the N-glycosylation machinery lead to selective cell death in the vertebrate retina. Currently, her research aims to elucidate the mechanisms of TDP-43 pathology in the brains of FTD and ALS patients carrying the C9orf72 hexanucleotide repeat expansion.
Lily Talley – Staff Research Associate
Lily joined the Seeley Lab in September 2023 as a research associate and assists with the brain bank, immunohistochemistry, and other technical work for various projects. Lily received a B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley in May 2023. As an undergraduate, Lily was a research assistant for a lab studying the neural pathways of feeding behavior in Drosophila, along with working in public health, sexual health education, and sexual violence and harassment prevention.
Felipe Luiz Pereira, PhD – Bioinformatician
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. His main interest is to integrate data from different technologies and work with big data science. He has begun as a Bioinformatician in Profs. Grinberg and Willian Seeley’s labs on May 1st of 2021, and his efforts are linked to Single Nuclei/Bulk RNA sequencing data processing, data integration, and statistical analysis.
Thomas Silva – Staff Research Associate
Thomas joined the Seeley Lab in July 2024 as a research associate working primarily in the brain bank. He earned a B.S. in Biological Sciences and a B.A. in Natural and Applied Sciences from Florida International University in Miami in May 2024. As an undergraduate, Thomas conducted research in a biochemistry lab, where he studied the effects of toxic levels of manganese, an environmental toxicant, on RNA synthesis by DNA polymerases. Additionally, he spent a summer researching non-invasive sensory stimulation as a potential therapeutic approach for brain-gut axis disruptions, which may have applications in Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
Bianca Gonzalez – Laboratory Assistant
Bianca joined Seeley Lab in July 2024 as a laboratory assistant and assists the brain bank in the preparation and packing of fixed tissue slides along with other tasks. Bianca received her B.S. in Biology at the University of San Francisco in 2023, where she assisted in pollination research in Suni Lab focusing on the correlation between the nutritional value of pollen grains in native San Francisco and Marin County plants and pollinator frequency.
Àlex Tudoras Miravet - Neuroscience PhD Student
Àlex joined the Seeley Lab as a UCSF Neuroscience PhD student in June 2024. In 2022, he obtained the B.Sc. degrees in Mathematics and in Engineering Physics, with a focus on Computational Neuroscience at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona. He then moved to New York to complete a research internship studying functional interactions of neurons at the Center for Neural Science, NYU in Alexander Reyes lab, where he identified critical conditions of cortical patterning for propagation of information across layers of neurons. Currently, his research focuses on elucidating the mechanisms underlying TDP-43 pathology and the cellular processes involved in ALS and FTLD pathogenesis, with a particular interest in sporadic disease cases.
Liz Beutter – Medical Student
Liz is a medical student at UCSF who is doing a yearlong research fellowship in the Seeley lab. Liz received a B.S. in neuroscience and physiology from the University of California, San Diego. Liz’s research interests include selective vulnerability in frontotemporal dementia and ALS and the role that cryptic splicing plays in FTD-ALS disease pathogenesis.
Yinyan Xu, MD, PhD - Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuropathology
Yinyan Xu joined the Seeley lab in September 2024 as a postdoctoral scientist. She completed her pre-med training in Tsinghua University and received a Medical Doctorate degree from Peking Union Medical College. She acquired her PhD in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences in Oxford University, investigating the translational profile of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived motor neurons carrying the C9orf72 hexanucleotide repeat expansion mutation. Her current research focuses on the pathological features of brain tissues from people with the mutant C9orf72 gene.