Mormino Lab Team
Elizabeth Mormino, PhD, Principal Investigator
Dr. Beth Mormino completed a PhD in Neuroscience at UC Berkeley in the laboratory of Dr. William Jagust, where she performed some of the initial studies applying Amyloid PET with the tracer PIB to clinically normal older individuals. This initial work provided evidence that the pathophysiological processes of Alzheimer’s disease begin years before clinical symptoms and are associated with subtle changes to brain regions critical for memory. During her postdoctoral fellowship with Drs. Reisa Sperling and Keith Johnson at Massachusetts General Hospital she used multimodal imaging techniques to understand longitudinal cognitive changes among individuals classified as preclinical AD. In 2017, Dr. Mormino joined the faculty at Stanford University in the department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences. Her research program focuses on combining imaging and genetics to predict cognitive trajectories over time, and the integration of novel PET scans to better understand human aging and neurodegenerative diseases.
Faculty
Alexandra N. Trelle, PhD
Instructor, Neurology & Neurological Sciences
Ali Trelle received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Cambridge, where she used functional MRI to characterize age-related changes in memory encoding and retrieval processes. In 2017, Ali joined Stanford University to work with Drs Beth Mormino and Anthony Wagner as lead of the Stanford Aging and Memory Study, a longitudinal multimodal biomarker study of human aging. As an Instructor in the Mormino Lab, Ali's research uses genetic, biofluid, and imaging markers of Alzheimer's disease to characterize the impact of early AD pathological changes on memory function in aging. Her research is supported by a K99 Pathway to Independence award from the National Institute on Aging.
Kyan Younes, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor, Neurology and Neurological Sciences
Dr. Kyan Younes is a behavioral and cognitive neurologist. He cares for people living with memory, language, executive, visuospatial, behavioral, or psychiatric symptoms. He completed an epilepsy research fellowship at Case Western Reserve University, a neurology residency at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, and a behavioral neurology fellowship at the University of California San Francisco. His recent research projects focused on characterizing patients with right anterior temporal degeneration and on understanding the role of the glymphatic system in neurodegenerative illnesses. His broad focus involves implementing various neuroimaging approaches to achieve early and accurate diagnosis of patients with neurodegenerative diseases.
Christina Young, PhD
Instructor, Neurology & Neurological Sciences
Christina Young received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Northwestern University in 2018 after completing her clinical internship at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she specialized in Neuropsychology. Her research throughout her graduate training and initial post-doctoral position in the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford focused on using neuroimaging, primarily fMRI, to better understand mood and anxiety disorders. She then joined the Mormino Lab in January 2020 as a postdoctoral fellow and pivoted her research to investigating cognitive decline and development of neuropsychiatric symptoms in neurodegenerative diseases through multimodal imaging approaches.
Post-docs
Mackenzie Carlson, PhD
Mackenzie received her PhD in Bioengineering from Stanford University in 2023. During her PhD, Mackenzie specialized in pre-clinical translation of a novel neuroinflammation PET radiotracer and worked to develop advanced high-resolution MR image acquisition and analysis techniques for studying Alzheimer's Disease. In the Mormino Lab, she is excited to receive training on longitudinal and large-scale analysis of tau-PET and PET/MR images. As an avid runner and hiker, Mackenzie is also interested studying the relationship between image-based biomarkers of Alzheimer's Disease and lifestyle-related factors.
Karly Cody, PhD
Karly Cody completed her PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin in the lab of Dr. Sterling Johnson. Her doctoral research focused on characterizing the preclinical disease stage of Alzheimer's disease using health, biomarker, and cognitive profiles obtained in late-midlife. At Stanford, Karly's research combines neuroimaging and fluid biomarkers to study trajectories of aging, including healthy brain aging as well as Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
Jintao Sheng, PhD
Jintao Sheng is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychology working with Drs. Anthony Wagner and Elizabeth Mormino on the Stanford Aging and Memory Study. She completed her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at Beijing Normal University working with Dr. Gui Xue. During her PhD, Jintao focused on neural mechanisms of human episodic memory encoding from the perspective of neural representations across materials, individuals, and functional networks in healthy young adults. As a postdoc, Jintao will use a multimodal neuroimaging design to understand the underlying neural mechanisms of age-related memory decline.
Tammy Tran, PhD
Dr. Tammy Tran is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychology working with Dr. Anthony Wagner and Dr. Elizabeth Mormino on the Stanford Aging and Memory Study. She is currently a Stanford ADRC REC Fellow and is interested in exploring the earliest signs of decline using structural and functional MRI in cognitively normal older adults. Tammy received her PhD at Johns Hopkins University in 2019 and received training in neuropsychology and high-resolution functional and structural neuroimaging, studying cognitively normal older adults and patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
Joe Winer, PhD
Joe Winer completed his PhD in Psychology at UC Berkeley working with Matthew Walker and William Jagust. During his PhD, Joe combined objective and subjective sleep assessment with PET imaging to investigate connections between sleep disruption and Alzheimer's disease in the context of healthy aging. In the Mormino Lab, Joe plans to explore how tracking sleep and other factors in everyday life can provide information about brain health and cognitive trajectories in aging and neurodegenerative diseases.
Graduate Students
Olamide Abiose
Olamide Abiose is a Neuroscience PhD student who joined the Mormino laboratory in December 2019. Her research is focused on the relationship between stress biomarkers and Alzheimer’s disease pathology, as well as brain network topology. She received her bachelor's degree in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2014. Afterwards, she received a Master’s in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Before joining the lab, she worked at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Law, Brain & Behavior. She was also a member of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory led by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett and Dr. Karen Quigley at MGH/Northeastern University. Outside of lab, Ola enjoys traveling, exploring new coffee shops, and hosting potlucks.
Clinical Research Coordinators
Selah-Marie Grogan
Selah-Marie graduated from the University of California Berkeley in 2023 with a major in Molecular and Cell Biology: Neurobiology and a minor in Languages, Literatures, and Cultures of the Spanish-Speaking World. At Cal, she worked on a chemical ecology study in the Whiteman lab before realizing her research interests were primarily in neurobiology. Additionally, she was a part of the Spanish and Portuguese Undergraduate Research Program studying Spanish-English bilingualism in California. In September 2023, she joined the Mormino lab to further her knowledge of neuroimaging, memory, and neurodegenerative diseases. She hopes to combine her interests in linguistics and neurobiology specifically with cognitive-communication impairments seen with neurodegenerative diseases. Outside of work, Selah-Marie enjoys hiking, running, soccer, and reading.
Jennifer Park
Jen graduated from the University of Southern California in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Neuroscience and a minor in Psychology. After graduating college, Jen worked at UC Davis at the Cognitive Electrophysiology and Neuroimaging Lab that seeks to develop methods sensitive to cognitive impairments of neurodegenerative diseases, and then was most recently working on the KHANDLE study that looks to shed light on racial & ethnic differences in aging, cognitive decline and dementia incidence. Jen joined the Mormino and Memory Labs in February 2022, and is looking forward to furthering her interests in the early detection of Alzheimer's Disease & other neurodegenerative diseases and in better understanding the changes that occur in the brain in preclinical AD. In her free time, Jen enjoys exploring new cafes, listening to r&b and jazz music, and spending time with her family.
Viktorija Pratuseviciute
Originally from Vilnius, Lithuania, Viktorija graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh where she completed her honor thesis exploring the development of working memory with Dr Candice Morey. She then completed her MSc in Speech and Language Therapy in London and explored individual differences in the development of language processing networks under the supervision of Dr Rachel Holland. She has worked as a speech and language pathologist specializing in adult neurological communication disorders across acute inpatient, rehabilitation, and outpatient settings. Viktorija joined the Mormino and Poston labs in February 2022 and hopes to use her specialist clinical knowledge to continue exploring language processing and features underlying speech comprehension and production in neurological disorders. Outside of work, Viktorija enjoys exploring the outdoors and going hiking with her husband and dog, Alfie. She’s always up for trying creative hobbies from painting to learning the piano.
America Romero
America graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 2021 with a major in Psychology and minors in Statistics and Child Development. At Cal Poly, she conducted research in Dr. Kelly Bennion’s lab, studying retroactive interference and facilitation in learning and memory. America’s senior thesis investigated how divided attention affects emotional false memory. America joined the Mormino and Wagner laboratories in September 2021 to further explore her interests in neuroimaging, memory and aging while working on the Stanford Aging and Memory Study.
Isha Sai
Isha graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2023 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Neuroscience and a minor in Cognitive Science. At UCLA, the conducted research at the UCLA Brain Mapping center under Dr. Shantanu Joshi. Isha’s senior thesis investigated brain abnormalities and neuropsychiatric correlates in Long COVID (PASC) using structural MRI. Isha joined the Mormino and Wagner laboratories in September 2023 and is looking forward to deepening her interests and understanding of memory, neurodegenerative disease and neuroimaging while working on the Stanford Aging and Memory Study. In her free time, Isha enjoys arts and crafts, exploring coffee shops and spending time with friends and family.
Hillary Vossler
Hillary graduated from Trinity College in 2017 with a major in neuroscience and a minor in history. At Trinity, she executed an independent research project studying interventions for patients with mild cognitive impairment. Before coming to Stanford, she worked on the US POINTER Study, a behavioral trial that aims to assess whether an intensive lifestyle intervention can protect cognitive function in older adults who are at increased risk for cognitive decline and dementia. She joined the Mormino lab in June 2021 to further explore her interests in neuroimaging and to investigate the early detection of Alzheimer’s Disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. Outside of work, Hillary enjoys traveling, hiking, and skiing.
Skylar Weiss
Skylar graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 2022 with a B.S. in Public Health and a minor in Statistics. At Cal Poly, she worked with Dr. Keadle's lab on StandUPTV, an NIH-funded project optimizing interventions for reducing sedentary screen time among adults. She discovered her passion for biomarker detection of preclinical Alzheimer's disease while working as a summer intern in the Biostatistics group at USC's Alzheimer's Therapeutic Research Institute. In September 2023, she joined the Mormino Lab to expand her knowledge of neurodegenerative diseases as a neuroimaging coordinator. In her free time, Skylar can be found drawing, playing piano, and dipping in the ocean.
Data Analysts
Emily Johns
Emily received her A.B. in Neuroscience and Classics from Harvard University in 2021. Combining her independent research in Neuroscience and Classics, Emily’s senior honors thesis explored the neural basis of hallucinations and delusions using modern neuroimaging techniques and analysis of ancient Greek and Latin medical texts. During this time, she worked closely with the Human Connectome Project for Early Psychosis at the Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory at Harvard Medical School under the direction of Drs. Martha Shenton and Amanda Lyall studying the relationship between cortical thickness in early psychosis and various primary and secondary illness factors. After graduation, she worked at the Laboratory for Affective and Translational Neuroscience at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts studying the connection between childhood trauma and depression in adults using molecular and MR imaging techniques. Emily joined the Mormino Laboratory in May 2022 to further her expertise in neuroimaging and develop her skills in large-scale data analysis and management. Emily enjoys reading, writing, and exploring new restaurants outside of work.
Andrzej Sokołowski, PhD
Andrzej is a neuroscientist and data analyst who seeks to better understand the intersection of computer science and the human brain. Before joining the lab he completed postdoctoral training in clinical neuroscience at University of California San Francisco and in computer science at Concordia University in Montreal. His primary area of research is neuroinformatics and its feasibility to investigate the trajectory of neurodegenerative diseases using big data. He seeks to answer questions about human behavior through data, specifically the generalizability and robustness of neuroimaging biomarkers. In the Mormino Lab he develops and improves analytical pipelines, analyzes neuroimaging data focusing on PET data harmonization, and aims to understand the development and progression of neurodegenerative diseases.
