Speakers

Joshua Hyong Jin Cho, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA and a board-certified psychiatrist. Dr. Cho's research has focused on the role of inflammation in depression, fatigue, and sleep disturbance, three constructs often collectively named as 'sickness behavior.' He currently

Constance Fung, MD, MSHS is an Associate Clinical Professor at UCLA. She is a sleep medicine physician with training in geriatrics. Dr. Fung is a Beeson Scholar and former American Sleep Medicine Foundation Physician Scientist Training Awardee, VA Advanced Geriatrics Fellow, and John A. Hartford Center of Excellence Scholar. She studies behavioral interventions to improve sleep in older adults.

Dr. Teresa Seeman is a Professor of Medicine & Epidemiology at UCLA and the Associate Chief for Research in the Division of Geriatrics in the David Geffen School of medicine.

Trained as a social epidemiologist, with post-doctoral training in neuroendocrinology, Dr. Seeman is an internationally recognized researcher whose work focuses on understanding how our lived experiences impact our health and well-being.

Zaldy S. Tan, MD, MPH is the Medical Director of the UCLA Alzheimer's and Dementia Care Program. He is a Professor of Medicine and the Assistant Dean for Curricular Affairs at the David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles. He is the Director and Principal Investigator for the UCLA Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program, the TimeOut Intergenerational Program, and the Improving Caregiving for Dementia (I-CareD) Project.

Sean Curran, PhD, focuses on understanding the regulatory control mechanisms that govern animal health across the entire lifespan. His research group has invested in defining molecular, genetic, and environmental factors that impact multiple parameters of health (resistance to environmental and dietary stress, mobility, metabolism, reproductive-fitness, and mitochondrial function) throughout life.

Ms. Trejo was the first Latina appointed to level of General Manager for the City of Los Angeles. She is responsible for the overall administration of the Los Angeles Department of Aging serving one of the largest and most diverse concentrations of older persons in the U.S. She serves as technical and policy advisor to the Mayor and City Council; and represents the City of Los Angeles before the public, community and private groups on matters affecting senior citizen affairs.

Catherine Sarkisian MD, MSHS is a Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Division of Geriatrics and Staff Physician at the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System. She is Director of the Los Angeles Community Academic Partnership for Research in Aging (L.A. CAPRA), an NIH-funded partnership between UCLA and The City and County of Los Angeles Area Agencies on Aging to support research on sustainable programs to improve quality of life of under-resourced seniors.

Dr. Deena Goldwater is an attending cardiologist and a Clinical Instructor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

She has a joint appointment in the departments of Cardiology and Geriatrics and has established a geriatric cardiology outpatient clinic at UCLA.

Her research is focused on patient-prioritized goal-directed care in cardiovascular disease as well as the relationship between emotional and physical stress, inflammation, and atherosclerosis.

Ajit Divakaruni is an Assistant Professor of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Marshall Scholar and NSF Graduate Research Fellow. He then was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego prior to joining the UCLA faculty.

Dr. Bernard, Deputy Director of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Health, serves as NIA’s senior geriatrician and principal advisor to the NIA director, overseeing over $1.5 billion in aging research conducted and supported annually by the Institute.

Dr. Carroll is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science at UCLA, a member of the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology and the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, and leads the UCLA Aging Biology and Behavior Laboratory.

Alan Castel is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focus on how cognition changes with age and the degree to which people are aware of their memory ability (a form of metamemory).

Dr. Fox trained as a Biological Anthropologist at Yale (BA) and Cambridge (PhD), and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Psychiatry at UC Irvine School of Medicine.

She is currently an Assistant Professor at UCLA, with joint appointments in Biological Anthropology and Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, and maintains a volunteer appointment as Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at UC Irvine.

Dr. Brian Kennedy is internationally recognized for his research in the basic biology of aging and is a visionary committed to translating research discoveries into new ways of delaying, detecting, preventing and treating age-related conditions. He leads a team of 23 principal investigators at the Buck Institute – all of whom are involved in interdisciplinary research aimed at extending healthspan, the healthy years of life.

Dr. Sarrafzadeh received his Ph.D. in 1987 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He joined Northwestern University as an Assistant Professor in 1987. In 2000, he joined the Computer Science Department at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He is a co-founder and co-director of the center for SMART Health and a co-director of BRITE center on Minority Health Disparities.

Dr. Merrill attended UC Berkeley for his undergraduate studies in neuroscience and psychology. He completed his MD and a PhD in Neuroscience at UCSD, with a focus on learning and memory in aging. He has been at UCLA for the past 12 years, first completing adult psychiatry residency and geriatric psychiatry fellowship training before joining the full time Psychiatry faculty in July of 2010.

Dr. Beltrán-Sánchez’s research focuses on the demography of health and aging. He has written on health patterns and trends in low- and middle-income countries; on aging in high-income countries including issues about compression of morbidity; on the links between early life experiences and late life outcomes; as well as on biomarker data from Mexico to study physiological patterns of health and their link with sociodemographic factors.