People

Lab Members

Virginia Sturm, Ph.D.

Director

Virginia Sturm, PhD is the John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation Endowed Professor at UCSF. Dr. Sturm is a Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry and the director of the Clinical Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. After undergraduate work at Georgetown University, she received her PhD in clinical psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and completed her clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco in neuropsychology. Her research focuses on identifying the neural systems that support emotion and social behavior in neurodegenerative disease and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Email: [email protected]

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Alex Martinez-Arroyo

Clinical Research Coordinator

Alex graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his Bachelor of Science in psychology with a minor in neuroscience in May 2021. While at the University of North Carolina, he worked in Dr. Prinstein's lab where he studied adolescent interpersonal relationships, depression, and suicide. He looked for subjective biomarkers of stress and their effect on mental health. Alex also worked in Dr. Muscatell's Social Neuroscience Lab were he studied how the brain responds to health messages in people from different cultural backgrounds. Alex joined the CAN Lab in June 2021.

Email: [email protected]

Amanda Gerenza

Clinical Research Coordinator

Amanda graduated from the University of Scranton in May 2022. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and Philosophy with a minor in Biochemistry. She worked in Dr. Son's neurobiology lab at the University of Scranton, where she studied the effects of developmental hypoxia on neural development and behavior. Amanda joined the CAN Lab in August 2022.

Email: [email protected]

Jiwoo Han

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator

Jiwoo joined the CAN Lab in July 2023. She graduated from Amherst College with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in May 2023. On campus, she has conducted psychology research on autobiographical memories and emotion regulation, and art history research on photography. She has also worked with Dr. Willard at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital to investigate how young cancer survivors make meaning of their experiences through social media images.

Email: [email protected]

Jenna Gittle

Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator

Jenna joined the CAN Lab in August 2024. She graduated from Boston College in May 2024 with a Bachelor in Science in Neuroscience and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. While in college, she interned at the Center for Health Outcomes and Interdisciplinary Research at Massachusetts General Hospital, working with Dr. Rush on the development of a psychosocial resilience program for ALS dyads. She also worked with Dr. Heberlein’s lab investigating mind perception in political contexts and Dr. Pepperberg’s lab investigating cognition in African grey parrots.

Email: [email protected]

Micah Valero

Lab Manager

Micah joined the CAN lab in June 2023. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in May 2023 at San Francisco State University. During her time in college, she volunteered in Dr. Mendes' Emotion, Health, and Psychophysiology lab and eventually in Dr. Holley's Relationship, Emotion, and Health lab where she studied college experiences and learned the Facial Action Coding System (FACS).

Email: [email protected]

Ashlin Roy

Data Scientist

Ashlin joined the CAN lab in July 2018. As the lab’s data scientist, he leverages a wide range of statistical and data analytics techniques, integrating physiological, neuroimaging, genetic, and behavioral data to investigate the neurobiology of emotions and behavior in neurodegenerative diseases and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Email: [email protected]

Amie Wallman-Jones

Postdoctoral Scholar

Amie Wallman-Jones joined the CAN lab in February 2023. She previously received her PhD from the University of Bern in Switzerland. Her graduate work assessed how physical activity influences interoceptive processing, where she used a multi-method approach to reveal the active ingredients driving this relationship.

Email: [email protected]

Isabel Sible

Postdoctoral Fellow

Isabel joined the CAN lab in September 2024 as a neuropsychology postdoctoral fellow. She received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Southern California and completed her pre-doctoral internship (geriatric neuropsychology track) at the Palo Alto VA. Her graduate work investigated relationships between physiological functioning (especially blood pressure), brain aging, and risk for cognitive decline. Prior to beginning her PhD, Isabel worked as a Clinical Research Coordinator in Dr. Sturm’s lab.

Email: [email protected]

Gabriela Gocheva

Research Assistant

Gabriela earned her Bachelor of Science in Psychology with Childhood Development from Birkbeck, University of London in May 2020. She worked in Dr. Atsushi Senju's lab at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, where she studied social cognition in autism. Inspired by her practical experience at Phoenix Primary and Secondary School, Gabriela founded a non-profit dedicated to providing multilingual psychoeducation to families affected by autism in underserved communities. She is driven to improve specialized care for neurodiverse children, through understanding the neural and cognitive mechanisms behind socio-emotional development.

Email: [email protected]

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