BrainSPORT

Our Team

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The UCLA BrainSPORT Program is led by Director Dr. Giza, and six Associate Directors from across UCLA. Together they bring expertise in pediatric and adult neurology, neuropsychology, sports medicine and brain injury research, so every patient benefits from coordinated care, research and education.

Director

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Christopher C. Giza, MD, 

Dr. Giza graduated from Dartmouth College, received his M.D. from West Virginia University and completed Adult and Pediatric Neurology training at UCLA. He worked on the Yosemite Search and Rescue team before joining the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center in 1998.  He served as Vice-Chief of the California State Athletic Commission (2005-2015), as an advisor for the U.S. Department of Defense, traveling to Afghanistan (2011) and on the Board of Directors of the Concussion In Sport Group (CISG 2023-2024). He founded and directs the UCLA Steve Tisch BrainSPORT & Operation Mend BRAIN TBI programs. He co-authored concussion/mild TBI guidelines for AAN (2013), CDC (2018) and the CISG (2017, 2023). He serves on concussion advisory committees for MLS, NBA and US Soccer and is a clinical consultant for MLS/USSF, NHL/NHLPA, NBA, NFL, the LA Lakers and the LA Chargers. Dr. Giza co-leads the CARE4Kids Concussion Consortium, working to identify objective biomarkers of Persisting Post-Concussion Symptoms in adolescents.  He is the Rubin Brown Professor and Chief of Pediatric Neurology at UCLA Children’s Hospital.  Chris enjoys hiking & climbing, road cycling and off-the-beaten path travel.

Associate Directors

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Meeryo C. Choe, MD, FAAN, 

Meeryo Choe, MD, FAAN grew up in the Los Angeles area, traveled east to attend Amherst College, where she majored in Fine Arts completing a senior thesis in Printmaking. She is currently an Associate Professor in Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Neurology, at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and the Program Director for the Child Neurology Residency Program. She is also the Associate Director of the UCLA Steve Tisch BrainSPORT Program, and helps oversee its mission, providing clinical care for injured student athletes, performing clinical research in pediatric traumatic brain injury TBI, and educating the community about sports-related concussion. Her research focuses on clinical outcome after pediatric TBI, with interests in post-concussive autonomic dysfunction and gender disparities in concussion incidence and recovery. She was a co-author on the CDC’s pediatric mTBI review and guidelines published in JAMA Pediatrics, and is a site-PI for the CARE4Kids U54, a multi-institutional longitudinal pediatric concussion study. 

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Talin Babikian, PhD, ABPP, 

Dr. Talin Babikian is a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist and Associate Clinical Professor in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.  She is the Associate Director of the UCLA BrainSPORT Program, an inter-departmental and multi-disciplinary program for identifying and treating brain injuries — including concussions — in youth and professional athletes, where she oversees the Sports Neuropsychology Fellowship training program.  She also serves as Training Director for the UCLA Semel Institute Neuropsychology Fellowship program.  Dr. Babikian is actively involved in clinical research identifying biopsychosocial markers of repair, recovery, and outcomes following a brain injury in childhood. She has authored and presented several works on this topic in academic journals and at professional seminars nationally and internationally.

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Mayumi Prins, PhD, 

Dr Prins is a leader in the field of adolescent traumatic brain injury research.  She specializes in brain metabolism after head injuries and understanding the role of alternative substrates in recovery of function.   Her research is translational and she collaborates with UCLA Engineering, Pediatric Neurology, Neurosurgery and Neurocritical Care faculty to address the adolescent brain needs after concussion and more significant TBI.  In leadership, Dr Prins integrates and supports the collaborative research to grow the brain stimulation program, headache program, concussion assessment and management program, basic science research lab work in imaging, sensory processing, glymphatics and metabolism. 

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Joshua L. Kamins, MD, 

Dr. Joshua Kamins  is an Associate Professor of Neurology at UCLA and an Associate Director of the Steve Tisch BrainSPORT program. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and received his M.D. from UC San Diego. He then returned to Southern California to train in Neurology at UCLA. At UCLA, Dr. Kamins found a way to unite his interests in sports medicine and neurology by becoming the first neurologist to complete fellowships in both Headache Medicine and Sports Neurology. His current research interests include investigating treatments for post-traumatic headaches and improving the diagnosis of concussion, while his clinical interests consist of primary headache and facial pain disorders, post-traumatic headaches, and persisting post-concussion symptoms. He sees both pediatric and adult patients in the Steve Tisch BrainSPORT clinic as well as the Goldberg Migraine program. He also serves on the mild TBI task force for the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and the Post-Traumatic Headache interest group for the American Headache Society.

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Joshua T. Goldman, MD, MBA, 

is a Health Sciences Associate Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Orthopaedic Surgery at UCLA, Associate Director of the UCLA BrainSPORT Program, and Program Director of the UCLA Sports Medicine Fellowship. He is also Associate Director of the Center for Sports Medicine at the Luskin Orthopaedic Institute for Children. He earned his MD and MBA at the University of Southern California and completed his family medicine residency and sports medicine fellowship at UCLA. Dr. Goldman cares for family medicine and sports medicine patients of all ages and supervises medical students, residents, and fellows. His research interests include sport concussion, pediatric sports injuries, running medicine, and hamstring injuries. He is a team physician for UCLA football and men's soccer and for the Los Angeles Chargers.

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Kevin Bickart, MD, PhD, 

Kevin Bickart is an Assistant Professor in Neurology specializing in sports and behavioral neurology as part of UCLA’s BrainSPORT, Easton, Neurobehavior, and Operation Mend programs. He completed his MD/PhD in anatomy and neurobiology from Boston University School of Medicine, post-doc at Northeastern and Harvard Universities, residency in neurology at Stanford, and dual fellowship in behavioral and sports neurology at UCLA. He is double board certified in Brain Injury Medicine and Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry. Kevin was the first to identify neuroimaging correlates of social network size in humans, among his other findings published in high impact journals, such as Nature Neuroscience and The Journal of Neuroscience. He comes from a lineage of well-known and inspiring mentors, including Lisa Feldman Barrett at Northeastern, Brad Dickerson at Harvard, Mike Greicius at Stanford, and more recently Mario Mendez and Chris Giza at UCLA. Kevin’s current research focuses on mapping and modulating brain circuits to promote overall brain health and personalized recovery from chronic neurological symptoms. He runs the Bickart Lab, co-hosts The Better Brain Podcast, and directs the the student-led Brain Health Project all dedicated to educating bright minds and maintaining a commitment to the community. 

Clinicians

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William P. Flavin, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at UCLA who practices at the UCLA Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer's Research and Care and the UCLA BrainSPORT Program. He specializes in sports neurology and TBI-related neurodegenerative disease, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). A former varsity football player at the University of Notre Dame, he earned his BS in Biochemistry there and his MD/PhD at Loyola University Chicago, where he studied the prion-like spread of protein aggregates in neurodegenerative disease. He completed neurology residency and sports neurology fellowship training at UCLA and joined the faculty in 2025. Dr. Flavin's research focuses on tau-mediated neurodegeneration in cell and animal models.

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Madison B. Harris, OTD, is a board-certified occupational therapist and head of the Occupational Therapy Program at the UCLA BrainSPORT Program, where she treats concussion and TBI across the lifespan, researches post-concussive autonomic dysfunction and gender disparities in recovery, and leads community education. A Los Angeles native, she earned her MSOT and OTD at the University of Southern California, where she also served as an intern athletic trainer for the football team, and completed her doctoral residency with BrainSPORT. She is part of the interdisciplinary care team at UCLA Operation Mend, which supports post-9/11 combat veterans with TBI. Dr. Harris created the occupational therapy teaching program for BrainSPORT and Operation Mend, precepts doctoral students, and developed a transition program for adolescents with epilepsy.

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Alexandra Tanner, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She earned her BA in Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College and her PhD in Clinical Psychology, with a minor in Quantitative Psychology, at UCLA. Dr. Tanner specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy for emotional disorders and persisting post-concussion symptoms.

 

 

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McKenna Borras, OTD, is a board-certified occupational therapist at the UCLA BrainSPORT Program. Originally from Northern California, she earned her BS in Kinesiology at Sonoma State University (2020), followed by her MS (2022) and OTD (2024) in Occupational Therapy at the University of Southern California, and completed her doctoral residency with BrainSPORT in 2024. In addition to rehabilitating athletes, Dr. Borras has a special interest in treating patients with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS).

 

Research

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David A. Hovda, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Neurosurgery and Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Lind Lawrence Eminent Scholar. He earned his PhD at the University of New Mexico and completed postdoctoral training at UCLA. The Department of Neurosurgery recruited him in 1989 to lead its research on the cellular pathophysiology of brain injury, and he founded the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center, which earned NIH recognition as a Center of Excellence. Dr. Hovda is past president of the National and International Neurotrauma Societies and has chaired study sections for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The U.S. Army honored him with its Strength of the Nation Award for his work on military TBI.

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Robert F. Asarnow, PhD, is the Della Martin Professor of Psychiatry in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, a Professor in the UCLA Department of Psychology, and Director of the UCLA Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury Research Program. He earned his PhD at Wayne State University. A neuropsychologist, Dr. Asarnow uses neuropsychological evaluation, brain imaging, and electrophysiology to study language, cognition, and school and adaptive functioning after TBI in children and adults. His group has conducted one of the major studies of outcomes after mild pediatric TBI and one of the largest controlled trials of cognitive training in children with brain injury. He also studies neurobehavioral outcomes after pediatric epilepsy surgery and sees patients with TBI and their families.

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Neil G. Harris, PhD, is a Professor-in-Residence in the UCLA Department of Neurosurgery, where he directs the NEIL lab and serves as scientific director of the UCLA 7T animal imaging core. He earned his BSc in Biology at the University of Portsmouth and his PhD in Physiology at King's College London, then trained in multimodality imaging in London, Cambridge, and Florida. His early work addressed infantile hydrocephalus and ischemic stroke. Dr. Harris's current research explores plasticity and recovery of function after traumatic brain injury, combining cell biology techniques with in vivo MRI and PET to study axonal injury, cerebral blood flow, and metabolism.

Current Fellows

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Todd Rubin, MD, PhD, 

is a physician-scientist and fellow in the UCLA BrainSPORT Program who studies the risks and long-term consequences of repetitive head injury in sports. After graduating from New York University, he worked as a research assistant in Dr. Bruce McEwen's lab at Rockefeller University. He earned his MD/PhD at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, using diffusion tensor MRI to study repetitive head injury in soccer players and rats in Dr. Michael Lipton's lab. During his research-track neurology residency at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he served as chief resident, he worked with Dr. Fanny Elahi on susceptibility and resilience to repetitive head trauma and its potential role in neurodegenerative disease. Dr. Rubin aims to advance the understanding and prevention of brain injury in athletes.

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Jake Levine, MD, 

is a fellow in the UCLA BrainSPORT Program. Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Dr. Levine earned a BA in Spanish and Portuguese at Dartmouth College and then lived and taught in Medellín, Colombia. He went on to earn his MD at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and completed residency in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Mount Sinai. A former soccer, rugby, and hockey player, Dr. Levine brings firsthand athletic experience to the care of sports-related brain injury.

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Antonio Vega Ortiz, PsyD, 

is a neuropsychology fellow in the UCLA BrainSPORT Program. Originally from Puerto Rico, he moved to the mainland in 2024 to continue his training toward becoming a neuropsychologist. His clinical interests include sports-related brain injury, neurodegenerative disorders, and culturally responsive neuropsychological care. Dr. Vega Ortiz is especially committed to expanding access to neuropsychological services for people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities.