Huntington’s Disease Center of Excellence at Stanford

Sharon Sha, MD, MS
Director, Huntington's Disease Center of Excellence
Clinical Professor, Neurology & Neurological Sciences

Dr. Sharon Sha is a Clinical Professor at Stanford University. In addition to LBD RCOE Co-Director, she is Associate Vice Chair of Clinical Research for the Department of Neurology, Director of the Huntington’s disease and Ataxia Clinic, clinical core co-leader of the Stanford ADRC, the founding Director of the Stanford Behavioral Neurology Fellowship and leads the clinical trials for the Memory Disorders division. The majority of her clinical and research time is devoted to caring for patients with behavioral neurodegenerative disorders, finding treatments for them, and training the next generation to do the same.

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.

Laurice Yang, MD, MHA
Clinical Associate Professor, Neurology & Neurological Sciences

Dr. Laurice Yang received her bachelor’s degree in Molecular Cell Biology at the University of California in Berkeley.  Subsequently, she earned a master’s degree in Health Administration at the University of Southern California where she received the high honor as a Dean Merit Scholar.  She went on to obtain her medical degree from the University of Vermont and completed her neurology residency at the University of Southern California where she was appointed Neuroscience Chief Resident and spent the year revamping the entire medical student/resident education curriculum.  She completed her clinical training as a movement disorders fellow at the University of California in Los Angeles.

Dr. Laurice Yang is a board certified neurologist, specializing in the diagnosis of movement disorders including Parkinson’s disease, atypical parkinsonian disorders, Essential Tremor, and Huntington’s disease.  

Dr. Yang also has a background in healthcare administration and had interned in marketing and HR at several community hospitals before starting her medical degree.  She is currently Associate Physician Improvement Leader, the Assistant Clinic Chief and the Associate Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs in the Department of Neurology.  Dr. Yang is also passionate about quality improvement education. She is currently the Co-Executive Director of CELT (Clinical Effectiveness Leadership Training Program)  at Stanford which is a leadership and quality improvement course that has graduated over 2000 participants since its inception in 2014.  She also has been teaching quality improvement at the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) where she was an invited speaker in 2022 and 2023 to discuss quality improvement methodology and leadership skills.  She is also part of the AAN Quality Measures Subcommittee where she is involved in creating national guidelines for both inpatient and outpatient neurology. 

Jacinda Sampson, MD, PhD
Clinical Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences

Dr. Jacinda Sampson received her MD and a PhD in biochemistry from University of Alabama at Birmingham, and completed her neurology residency and neurogenetics fellowship at the University of Utah. She served at Columbia University Medical Center prior to joining Stanford University Medical Center in 2015. Her areas of interest include myotonic dystrophies, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and neurogenetic disorders such as neurofibromatosis, hereditary spastic paraparesis, spinocerebellar ataxia, among others. She is interested in clinical trials for treatment of neurogenetic disorders, and is the clinical application of next-generation genomic sequencing to genetic testing.

Maya Katz, MD
Clinical Associate Professor, Neurology and Neurological Sciences

Dr. Maya Katz specializes in treating patients with Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, dystonia and other movement disorders. She is dedicated to taking a comprehensive approach to well-being and to understanding what matters most to her patients and their families. She is a pioneer of integrating palliative care into the treatment of advanced movement disorders; this interdisciplinary approach addresses the physical, psychosocial, spiritual and practical distress caused by serious illness, and has been shown to significantly improve quality of life in people with Parkinson's disease and related disorders.  

In addition, Dr. Katz is passionate about improving access to neurological care in under-resourced areas. In medical school, she co-founded the Weill Cornell Community Clinic, a free clinic for uninsured and underinsured patients in New York City. As a founding member of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorders Society Telemedicine Task Force, she co-founded the Asynchronous Consultation for Movement Disorders (ACMD) program, whose mission is to provide movement disorder specialty consultation services to providers in under-resourced areas of the world.

Dr. Katz received her Medical Degree from Cornell University. She completed her residency in Neurology at Mount Sinai Medical Center, where she was appointed Chief Resident during her fourth year of residency. She then completed her Movement Disorders Fellowship at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center. 

John Barry, MD
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences (by courtesy)

Dr. Barry, director of the Neuropsychiatry and Psychotherapy Clinics, has a special interest in neuropsychiatric problems of people with dementia. He directs the UCNS-accredited Stanford Neuropsychiatry Fellowship Program and is consultant to the Stanford Center on Memory Disorders and the Stanford Movement Disorders Center.

Sepideh Bajestan, MD, PhD
Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Carly Siskind, MS, LCGC
Senior Genetic Counselor
Clinical Associate Professor (Affiliated)

Before joining the neuromuscular team in 2011, Carly Siskind worked in neurogenetics at Wayne State University in Detroit. She sees patients both at Stanford Hospital and Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Ms. Siskind is a Clinical Associate Professor of Neurology (Affiliated). She has been working in Huntington disease clinics since 2012, and is active in research around genetic counseling for HD.

Ms. Siskind obtained her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan with a major in Biology, minor in Global Change and a teaching certificate for high school science. She obtained her Master’s degree from Northwestern University in Chicago. She was board certified by the National Society of Genetic Counselors in 2009 and licensed by the state of California since 2011.
 

Andrea Hanson-Kahn, MS
Clinical Associate Professor
Dept of Genetics and Dept of Pediatrics