People

Marilu Gorno Tempini, MD, PhD

Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry
Charles Schwab Distinguished Professorship in Dyslexia and Neurodevelopment
Director, Language Neurobiology Laboratory
Co-Director, UCSF Dyslexia Center
Co-Director, UCSF Dyslexia Center and the UCSF|UC Berkeley Schwab Center for Dyslexia and Cognitive Diversity
Neurology

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.

David Baquirin

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator
Neurology

David received his BA in Neurobiology from UC Berkeley. Before joining the ALBA lab, he was the Sleep Data Research Coordinator for the Richards lab at the SFVA. Outside of research, he has experience as a medical scribe and after school teacher. In his free time he enjoys watching basketball and dancing.

Phaedra Bell, PhD

Program Lead UCSF Dyslexia Ctr
Neurology

After over a decade in education leadership, teaching, leading teams, and developing programs in the arts, humanities, and medical education, I am using these skills to translate neuroscience research into programs and products that tackle inequity in health and education. As an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Global Brain Health, I worked with colleagues at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, the Division of Geriatrics, and at Trinity College Dublin to develop protocols for intervening in modifiable risk factors for dementia across the life course with a focus on marginalized older people.

Laura Bell

Visiting Practicum Student

Laura Bell, M.A., is a neuropsych practicum student at the UCSF Dyslexia Center under the supervision of Dr. Pereira. She is also a Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley's Clinical Science (Psychology) program, in Hinshaw Lab. She received her B.A.

Rian Bogley

Database Architect
Neurology

Rian graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2018 with a B.S. in Biology. He is currently the ALBA Lab and Dyslexia Center's Database Architect after having been a Clinical Research Coordinator with the team for over 3 years. Now, he primarily focuses on the development, implementation, and maintenance of more sophisticated database systems for both teams by utilizing his relevant experience in database systems such as REDCap, LAVA, Excel, Qualtrics, and PACS.

Ellie Carpenter

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator
Neurology

Originally from Austin, Ellie graduated from the University of San Francisco with her BA in psychology in 2023. At the University of San Francisco, Ellie was a research assistant in the Learning and Memory Lab where she studied thought suppression and the rebound effect. She was also a research assistant in the Social Cognition Lab where she examined moral outrage in virtual settings. 

Hannah Cho

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator
Neurology

Hannah graduated from the University of Southern California in 2022 with a B.S. in Neuroscience. At USC, she was a research assistant at the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute using histology techniques to visualize fluorescently labeled neural circuits. She also studied the effects of sex hormones on Alzheimer's Disease as a research assistant at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Hannah has experience performing immunohistochemistry, perfusion-fixation surgery, confocal microscopy, and imageJ analysis. She now works in the ALBA lab with Primary Progressive Aphasia.

Jessica de Leon, MD

Assistant Adjunct Professor
Neurology

Dr. Jessica de Leon received her undergraduate degrees in neuroscience and Spanish at Johns Hopkins University and an MD with thesis degree at UCSF. She then completed a medicine internship and neurology residency at UCSF, where she served as chief resident. She completed a fellowship in behavioral neurology and is currently an assistant professor at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center (MAC). Her research focuses on how bilingualism, language typology, and genetics affect the symptoms, neuroimaging, and progression of primary progressive aphasia and related neurodegenerative disorders.

Heather Murphy

Research Coordinator
Neurology

Heather Murphy, EdM, is a research coordinator for the UCSF Dyslexia Center's Multitudes project. She is interested in research-practice partnerships that drive toward improved reading outcomes for children historically underserved by the education system. Prior to UCSF, she was an education practitioner, serving for 18 years as a K-6 instructional coach, reading specialist, literacy and math interventionist, and general and special education teacher in Brooklyn, NY; Washington, DC; Cambridge, MA; and San Francisco, CA.

Zoe Ezzes

Research Speech-Language Pathologist
Neurology

Zoe is a speech-language pathologist at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center with a B.S. in Cognitive Science with specialization in neuroscience from UC San Diego and an M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology from Vanderbilt University. She conducts diagnostic speech and language assessments for research participants at the ALBA Lab and UCSF Dyslexia Center, and she also provides speech and language therapy for patients with PPA in treatment research in collaboration with the Aphasia Research and Treatment Lab (ARTLab) at the University of Texas at Austin.

Melina Flores

HR Specialist & Executive Administrative Assistant
Neurology

Erica Gutmann, MS, SLP

Research Speech Language Pathologist

Erica is a pediatric speech-language pathologist in the UCSF Dyslexia Center. She has a B.S. in Human Development from UC Davis and an M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology from Boston University. Erica has worked with students with language-based learning disorders in both outpatient and school settings. Her research interests in developmental language and reading disorders are at the intersection of neurocognition, education, and clinical practice.

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