Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship Program

Program Director
Parnika Saxena, MD

Parnika Saxena is board certified in general and geriatric psychiatry. She completed her residency at St Elizabeth's Medical Center (affiliated with Tufts University School of Medicine) in Massachusetts and a clinical geriatric fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles. She also worked as a research fellow in Clinical Psychopharmacology at Mclean Hospital (affiliated with Harvard Medical School) and also completed a psychoanalytic psychotherapy fellowship from the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Her primary research interests lie in pharmacological and interventional treatments for resistant depression. At Stanford, she works on the inpatient service, outpatient geropsychiatry clinic and the electroconvulsive therapy service. She also serves at the program director of the Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship. In addition to her clinical and research interests, she is passionate about patient advocacy and promoting mental health legislative changes to benefit patient care and has testified in state senate hearings to that end as a physician representative of organizations like the Northern California Psychiatric Association and American Psychiatric Association.

Site Director, Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship, VA Palo Alto
Anna Garcia, MD

Dr. Anna Garcia is a board-certified Geriatric Psychiatrist at the Palo Alto VA Health Care System Menlo Park Division CLC (Community Living Center) and the site director for Stanford geriatric psychiatry fellowship program.  She completed general psychiatry residency training at the University of New Mexico followed by completion of geriatric psychiatry fellowship at Stanford Health Care.  Her professional expertise and areas of interest include ethical issues in geriatric psychiatry and innovations in dementia residential care.

Erin Cassidy-Eagle, PhD

Dr. Erin Cassidy-Eagle is a Clinical Professor in the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department at Stanford University.  She is an attending Psychologist in the Geriatric Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic and co-chief of the Geriatric Psychiatry section, with more than 20 years of experience working with older adults. She is board certified by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine in Behavioral Sleep Medicine and is currently serving as President of the newly formed Board of Behavioral Sleep Medicine. She has conducted research and clinical trainings in the areas of insomnia, geriatric depression, anxiety, as well as Alzheimer’s disease and their associated behavioral manifestations. Dr. Cassidy-Eagle has served as PI on an RCT utilizing CBT for Insomnia versus an active control as well as a project developing and implementing a training program for sleep interventionists.  Clinically, Dr. Erin Cassidy-Eagle specializes in the treatment of mental health disorders in adults and older adults. Dr. Cassidy-Eagle has a special interest in the intersection of sleep, cognition and mental health.

Christine Gould, PhD

Dr. Gould received her Ph.D in psychology from West Virginia University. She completed her internship at VA Palo Alto Health Care System and an Advanced Fellowship in Geriatrics at the GRECC. Dr. Gould is board certified in geropsychology. Her research program develops and tests tailored, self-directed mental health interventions in older adults. Her current funded studies are testing the efficacy of a video-delivered progressive muscle relaxation program with telephone coaching support in reducing anxiety and improving functioning and examining the use of technology by older Veterans. She is also is examining a mobile app-based intervention for depression in middle age and older adults. Dr. Gould has an active interest in training future geriatric mental health clinicians and researchers. She provides mentorship in the following areas: geriatric mental health interventions, technology-delivered interventions for older adults, program evaluation/quality improvement, and qualitative research methods.

Howard H. Fenn, MD

Howard H. Fenn, MD is a staff psychiatrist at the Palo Alto VA Health Care System and an affiliated clinical associate professor at Stanford. He is board-certified in both geriatric psychiatry and adult psychiatry, and has board certification with the American Board of Forensic Psychiatry. He completed his medical school at Loyola Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago, and graduated from general psychiatry residency at the University of California, San Francisco. His interests in geriatric psychiatry include psychopharmacology of the Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia,  legal aspects of geriatric psychiatry, and inpatient psychiatry. He has published articles and chapters related to these topics.  He consults to the Stanford/VA Alzheimer’s Center. He has served for ten years as Co-director of  the Stanford Geriatric Psychiatry fellowship and is the VA site director of the inpatient rotation for Stanford geriatric medicine fellowship.   

Daniel Kim, MD

Daniel Kim MD, a board-certified geriatric psychiatrist, obtained a B.S. in cellular & molecular biology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1996, and then earned an M.D. from Loma Linda University in Loma Linda, California in 2000.  He subsequently completed his general psychiatry residency training at the University of Illinois in Chicago in 2004, followed by a clinical fellowship and an NRSA postdoctoral fellowship in geriatric psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where he was a Hartford scholar. He subsequently served as medical director of the Senior Behavioral Health Intensive Outpatient Program, as well as the associate medical director of the Senior Behavioral Health inpatient unit at UCSD, till moving to Stanford University in 2016, where he now serves as medical director of the inpatient geriatric psychiatry service and co-chief of the Geriatric Psychiatry Section.

Feng Vankee Lin, PhD, MB, RN

My career has been devoted to understanding the neural mechanisms involved in brain aging and brain plasticity, with a special focus on early detection and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). My research approach integrates principles and findings from cognitive theory, clinical neuroscience, and computational neuroscience. This approach is complemented by my extensive research experience involving multi-modality neuroimaging (PET, sMRI, dMRI, and fMRI), psychophysiology, neuropsychology, and quantitative research methods. I currently lead an interdisciplinary clinical neuroscience lab, covering a wide spectrum of research from Phases 0-2 in three areas: (a) brain aging, focusing on the links between brain pathophysiology and clinical symptoms, in a wide range of populations, from older adults with superior cognitive capacity to preclinical and prodromal AD, with an overarching aim to gain insights into the broad mechanisms of aging, both in typical and atypical populations and to identify early biomarkers for AD; (b) novel non- pharmacological interventions that promote successful cognitive aging as well as alleviate or eliminate adverse effects of AD pathophysiology; and (c) advanced computational models (e.g., explainable AI) for understanding and intervening on brain aging.

Ryan Pate, MD

Dr. Ryan Pate is a board-certified adult psychiatrist with eligibility for board certification in geriatric psychiatry. He completed his general adult psychiatry training at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and pursued his geriatric psychiatry fellowship at Stanford Health Care. In addition to his psychiatry training, he is actively participating in the psychoanalytical psychotherapy fellowship offered by the Palo Alto division of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. Dr. Pate's research interests primarily focus on providing support for caregivers and developing group interventions tailored to older adults with mental health disorders. At Stanford, his professional practice primarily takes place in an outpatient setting, where he conducts appointments that involve a combination of medication management and psychotherapy interventions. Beyond his clinical work, Dr. Pate is dedicated to medical education.

Barbara R. Sommer, MD

Barbara R. Sommer, MD is board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, with Added Qualifications in Geriatric Psychiatry. She received her MD at New York Medical College and then completed a medical internship at Baystate Medical Center, a major affiliate of Tufts University. After a Psychiatry residency at Tufts, she completed fellowships in both psychopharmacology and geriatric psychiatry at McLean Hospital, part of Harvard Medical School. She has served as a faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Mt. Sinai Medical School in New York. She was the director of geriatric psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine for 16 years, and continues as an attending psychiatrist there as an emerita Associate Professor.

Tonita Wroolie, PhD

Ira Yenko, PhD

Parnika Saxena, MD
Geriatric Psychiatry Program Director
psaxena2@stanford.edu

Romola L. Breckenridge
Administrative Program Coordinator
romola@stanford.edu
Ph: (650) 736-1743