Trainees

Stephen Frochen

Stephen Frochen is a doctoral candidate at the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California. Frochen has a multidisciplinary educational and professional history, including a bachelor of science in urban and regional planning from California State Polytechnic University, a master’s degree in writing from San Diego State University, a doctoral degree in gerontology in progress, and a rich background in teaching and public service in the military, school districts, and cities.

Frochen’s research interests include housing for the elderly, particularly eldercare facilities. He has conducted extensive research on residential care in the City and County of Los Angeles as well as all of California. His most recent research focuses on a new eldercare land use ordinance in Los Angeles, which streamlines the permitting process of eldercare facility developments and allows them to be sited in any area of the jurisdiction. He is currently working on understanding and demonstrating how land use and planning tools such as this new eldercare ordinance may help to close the gap between a burgeoning demand for residential and institutional care among older adults and a languishing supply of such services and facilities.

Frochen has published the initial findings from his research in the Journal of Housing for the Elderly and Journal of Health and Aging and is in the process of contributing his work to other interdisciplinary journals adapted to housing, health, disability, and the elderly. He is an active member of the Gerontological Society of America and the American Association of Geographers, having presented papers at the annual meetings of both organizations. In the years ahead, he hopes to provide yet a new perspective on which decision makers and entrepreneurs can draw to make choices regarding housing for the elderly, within the constraints of an economy and housing stock largely unfit for functionally impaired older adults.

Curriculum Vitae

Molli Grossman

Molli Grossman is originally from Shavertown, Pennsylvania and began her doctoral studies at USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology in 2013, as a recipient of the USC Provost’s PhD Fellowship. She graduated from Georgetown University in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and English. Before coming to USC, Molli spent a year conducting research in the PTSD Research Department at NYU Langone Medical Center. Her primary interests are psychology and aging, and she has studied at USC under the direction of Dr. Tara Gruenewald and Dr. Elizabeth Zelinski, examining the mind-body processes that play a role in healthy aging. Specifically, her research has focused on how prosocial activities, such as caregiving and volunteering, are linked to well-being in later life. She is also passionate about improving quality of life for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and their caregivers, as well as reducing stereotypes surrounding aging and dementia.

Curriculum Vitae

Amy Hammerquist

I earned my Bachelor of Science in Biology from Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. While there, I completed four years of undergraduate research in the marine ecology lab of Dr. Jeremy Weisz, investigating the nitrogen cycling capacity of marine sponges and their associated microbial communities. I am currently pursuing a PhD in Molecular Biology in the lab of Dr. Sean Curran at USC. Our lab uses multiple model systems to better understand the relationship between protein homeostasis and health/lifespan. Specifically, I am interested in the protein MAF1, a negative regulator of RNA polymerase III, and its tissue-specific roles in regulating fat metabolism and other health-related outcomes. These pathways are quite well-conserved across species, and I hope my work will someday help us better understand metabolism in humans.

James Nhan

James Nhan received his Bachelor of Science degree in molecular biology with emphasis in biochemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He then worked in Dr. Pamela Bjorkman’s lab at the California Institute of Technology, studying the structure of the HIV virus and how to better fight against it. Currently, he is working on a PhD degree in molecular biology at the University of Southern California in Dr. Sean Curran’s lab. He uses the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans to study what can cause an animal’s health to decline with age. He ism particularly interested in how early life events can influence the health of an organism later in life.

Shai Porat

Originally from Israel, Shai Porat received his Bachelor’s in Science in Psychology at the University of Central Florida. Since then, he has worked in neuroimaging laboratories researching how memory is affected by sleep, Alzheimer's disease, dance, and drug abuse. Shai recently joined USC’s Neuroscience Graduate Program as a PhD student in the Fall of 2017. As a Gerontology NIH Predoctoral Fellow, Shai works under the mentorship of Dr. Mara Mather in the Emotion Cognition Lab. Currently his research includes investigating how breathing, sleep, heart rate variability, aging, and music affect emotion, memory and attention throughout normal and diseased aging.

Kristi Wisniewski

Kristi Wisniewski is a third year doctoral student at the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology working under the direction of Dr. Elizabeth Zelinski. Kristi graduated from The University of Alabama in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and minor in Biology. Before coming to USC, Kristi worked as a research analyst for the Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center in Nashville, Tennessee and contributed to the Vanderbilt Memory and Aging Project and the NOBLE clinical trial.

Kristi’s research interests surround cognition, memory, and aging in older adults. With a focus on screening measures for cognitive impairment, specifically Alzheimer’s disease, Kristi examines personal perception of memory or cognitive decline compared to objective neuropsychological performance and health outcomes. Her current projects involve geographic variation in rates of subjective cognitive complaint, personality factors and financial decision making associated with cognitive decline, and physician-patient communication regarding brain aging.

Yuan Zhang

Yuan Zhang is in the Gerontology Ph.D. program. She came to USC with an MS in Survey Methodology from the University of Michigan and a BA in Economics from the Central University of Finance and Economics. Her overarching research objective is to understand the role of behavioral, social, environmental, and contextual factors in making the aging process different across time and place. Her research covers multiple topics in demography and population health, focusing on determinants of morbidity, disability, and mortality over the life course in both less developed and more developed settings. Her dissertation work uses data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, a nationally representative study of middle-aged and older Chinese, to assess age-related physiological changes that underlie the risk of disease, disability, and mortality, and study the determinants of physiological health change and mortality among the older Chinese. In addition to her dissertation research, she is involved in research on life expectancy and extension of healthy life.