Team

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 the UCSF Dyslexia Center. She also directs the state-funded Multitudes Universal Screening Project, one of the four reading difficulties risk screeners approved by a state appointed panel for use in California public schools beginning in Fall of 2025. 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.

Celina Alba, MS

Staff Research Associate II

Celina graduated from the University of San Diego with a B.A. in Behavioral Neuroscience and a minor in Philosophy before she obtained her M.S. in Neuroimaging and Informatics from the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. With over three years of experience in multimodal neuroimaging analysis at Keck’s Laboratory of Neuroimaging, her research in the ALBA Lab will focus on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) analysis in collaboration with the Biomagnetic Imaging Lab to study language and neurodegeneration.

Giada Antonicelli

Visiting Graduate

Maya Bardorf, BA

Asst. Clinical Research Coordinator
Neurology

Maya graduated from Middlebury College in 2024 with a B.A. in neuroscience and a minor in art history. During her time at Middlebury, she contributed to a research project investigating gender and sex differences in visuospatial abilities among children using the JLAP task. Maya also spent a summer as a research assistant in the Hammack Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Vermont, where she studied the neurobiological underpinning of anxiety-like and depression-like behaviors.

Phaedra Bell, PhD

Program Lead UCSF Dyslexia
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.

Nicoletta Biondo, PhD

Specialist

Nicoletta holds a Ph.D. in Psychological Sciences and Education from the University of Trento and a Master’s in Linguistics and Cognitive Studies from the University of Siena. Her research bridges theoretical linguistics and cognitive neuroscience to investigate how linguistic information is processed in the brain across different populations, including healthy and brain-injured monolingual and bilingual adults, using methods such as eye-tracking, EEG, and neuroimaging.

Rian Bogley

Database Architect
Neurology

Rian graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2018 with a B.S. in Biology and has over five years of research experience at UCSF. As the ALBA Language Neurobiology Lab and Dyslexia Center's Database Architect, he develops and implements database systems for both teams, leveraging his experience in data management, data analysis, and neuroimaging.

Ellie Carpenter

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. 

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

Executive Administrative Assistant
Neurology

Melina Flores has worked in healthcare for over 15 years. She received a bachelor’s degree in Healthcare Management in 2015 and found working in the healthcare industry to be her passion, allowing her to nurture her desire to help others.

Chiara Gallingani, MD

Visiting Scholar

Chiara earned her MD from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy, where she is currently completing her residency in Neurology. As a visiting scholar at UCSF, her research focuses on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and primary progressive aphasia (PPA), with a particular interest in semantic dementia. During her six-month stay, she will contribute to ongoing projects exploring the neuroanatomical and clinical features of neurodegenerative language disorders.

Sarah Inkelis, PhD

Assistant Professor
Neurology

Sarah Inkelis is an assistant professor at the UCSF Dyslexia Center. She earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology at the SDSU/UC San Diego Joint Doctoral Program and completed her internship in pediatric neuropsychology at the UCLA Semel Institute. Her research at UCSF will focus on understanding the phenotype of dyslexia across the lifespan.

Pages