Kalekirstos Alemu
Kalekirstos is a third year Clinical Science PhD student working at the Emotion & Cognition Lab under the mentorship of Mara Mather, PhD. His research interest focuses on examining age-related emotional and cognitive changes in older adults utilizing behavioral and multimodal neuroimaging techniques. Prior to coming to USC, Kalekirstos graduated from San Diego State University with a double major in Psychology and Health Science.
Cameron Brown
Cameron Brown is a second year doctoral student at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Before starting at USC, Cameron completed a BA in Health and Human Biology, with a focus on Brain Health and Behavior, and a MS in Pathobiology at Brown University. Her research examines the impact of chronic stress on cancer risk and progression, with particular attention to aging populations most affected by health disparities. She is working under the direction of Lauren Brown, PhD.
Jessica Capaldi
Jessica is a graduate student in the Gerontology PhD program working under the mentorship of Jennifer Ailshire, PhD. Her research focuses on women’s health and aging, particularly how biological, behavioral, and environmental factors shape health outcomes across the lifespan. Jessica is a graduate of the University of San Diego (BA) and Loyola Marymount University (MA). Prior to USC, she served with Teach For America and worked in clinical research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Lilly Estenson
Lilly is a doctoral candidate in the Gerontology PhD program working under the mentorship of Mireille Jacobson, PhD. Her research focuses on how social and policy factors affect health insurance enrollment, health care utilization, and health outcomes across the lifespan. She is a graduate of Scripps College (BA) and the University of Michigan (MSW).
Aarthi Ganapathi
Aarthi is a second-year graduate student in the Clinical Science PhD program at USC under the mentorship of Bruna Martins-Klein, PhD. She received her bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience with a minor in Cognitive Science from UCLA in 2019. Her primary research interests include emotional coregulation and neural mechanisms of dyadic coping and well-being across the lifespan. Specifically, she is interested in tracking the unique biobehavioral responses of older adults when helping close loved ones regulate their emotions and cope with stressors.
Jillian Joyce
Jillian Joyce is a doctoral student in the Neuroscience Graduate Program working under the mentorship of Daniel Nation, PhD in the Vascular Senescence and Cognition (VaSC) lab. Her research interests focus on vascular aging and Alzheimer’s disease in older women. She graduated from Northeastern University with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology.
Kristina Dang
KJ Davidson-Turner
KJ Davidson-Turner is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Southern California. She draws upon both biological and sociological perspectives to better understand health disparities and age-related diseases at a population-level. Specifically, her research focuses on how stress and other social factors impact women’s hormonal health, aging transitions, and later life health outcomes. Prior to USC, KJ received her BA in Neuroscience from Middlebury College and her PhD in Sociology and Demography from the University of Texas at Austin.
Lorena Ferguson
Lorena Ferguson received her PhD in Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience from Rice University. She researches how individual differences in late life, such as menopause status and mental health, impact memory and neurological function. Her postdoctoral work examines how sex differences influence neurobiological changes in brain regions sensitive to Alzheimer’s disease pathology, which may in turn be associated with subtle memory impairments and increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Susanna Mage
Susanna Mage, PhD, is a gerontologist whose work examines how social and environmental exposures shape biological aging and physical and cognitive health in later life. She received her PhD in Gerontology from the University of Southern California, where her research focused on the financial, psychosocial, and health impacts of family caregiving, informed in part by her lived experience as a caregiver. Her current work integrates population-based data and biomarker measures to study how caregiving, neighborhood conditions, and environmental exposures contribute to physiological dysregulation and neurodegenerative risk. As a postdoctoral fellow, she continues to investigate social and environmental pathways to accelerated aging, cognitive decline, and adverse physical health outcomes.
Gina Nam
Gina Nam received her PhD in Epidemiology from UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Her research centers on aging in cancer survivorship, with particular interest in cognitive and functional aging among older cancer survivors and how their aging trajectories compare to the general population. Her postdoctoral work integrates lifecourse epidemiology and causal inference to examine how early-life exposures contribute to late-life cognitive aging and dementia risk, while also elucidating the mechanisms underlying the inverse association between cancer and dementia.
Addam Reynolds
Addam is currently a postdoctoral scholar of the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Addam graduated with his PhD in social work from Rutgers University, after completing both his undergraduate education in biological science and earning his MSW from Rutgers. Broadly, Addam’s scholarship examines the role of exposures to inequalities throughout the life course and its implications to health in older adulthood. More specifically, Addam’s work has demonstrated that larger social structures, such as racism and economic stratification, underlie associations between early life circumstances and cognitive aging in the United States. Currently, Addam is working on projects that include examining how biological aging is accelerated among those that receive nursing home or home health care, if adult children’s educational attainment is associated with own biological and epigenetic aging, and if sexual and gender minorities have elevated risk factors for cognitive impairment.
Michael Rosario
Michael A. Rosario, PhD, is a cognitive neuroscientist whose research examines how physical and social environments shape learning, episodic memory, and brain health across the lifespan. His work integrates population-based cohort data with neuroimaging and cognitive assessments to study how factors such as air pollution, neighborhood conditions, and environmental enrichment influence brain structure, brain function, and cognitive ability. His research emphasizes developmental and aging periods as critical windows of environmental sensitivity. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California, his current work focuses on identifying environmental factors that contribute to variability in episodic memory and brain aging.
Current positions may be out of date. Please check Google Search results or LinkedIn for most up-to-date positions for alumni.
Dawn Alley, PhD
Director, Prevention and Population HealthGroup
Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation
Joe Angelelli, PhD
Senior Advisor, Alternative Payment Models
UPMC Health Plan
Shelby Bachman, PhD
Graduate Research Fellow, University of Southern California
Jessica Brommelhoff, MPH, PhD
Principal Clinician, MedAvante, Bedford Massachusetts
Licensed Clinical Psychologist/Neuropsychologist, Specialized in Geropsychology
Lauren Brown, PhD
Assistant Professor,
USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology
Elisabeth Burgess, PhD
Director and Professor, Sociology and Gerontology
Georgia State University
Valeria Cardenas, PhD
Predoctoral Fellow
Hans Martin Dalton, PhD
Assistant Professor
University of Kansas
Marti DeLiema, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford Univ. Center on Longevity, Financial Fraud Research Center
Carrie Donoho, PhD
Chief of Behavioral Epidemiology
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
Charlotte Dunham, PhD
Associate Professor of Sociology
Director, Texas Tech Center for Women Studies
Texas Tech University
Kelly Durbin, PhD
F31 PhD Student
USC
Gillian Fennell, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Associate,
Boston University Medical Center
Stephen Frochen
VA Health Services Research and Development Fellow
VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare
Nicole Gatto, PhD
Associate Professor of Public Health
Director, Doctorate in Public Health Program
Claremont Graduate University
Haley Gallo, PhD
Researcher, Mathematica
Scott Hofer, PhD
Professor, Harald Mohr, M.D. and Wilhelma Mohr, M.D. Research Chair in Adult Development and Aging
Director, Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health Psychology
University of Victoria
Dom Grisafe, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
University of Southern California
Molli Grossman, PhD
Senior Specialist, Enrichment Programming
WISE & Healthy Agin
Amy Hammerquist, PhD
PhD Student
Dominique Ingegneri, PhD
Vice President, Health Care Economics
Medical Informatics at UnitedHealth Group
Chandra Ghosh Ippen, PhD
Psychologist, University of California, San Francisco
Dissemination Director, Child Trauma Research Program
Early Trauma Treatment Network of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN)
Ross Jacobucci, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Notre Dame
Brian Kaskie, PhD
Associate Professor
MPH in Policy Program, Health Management and Policy,
College of Public Health,
University of Iowa
Alice Kim, PhD
Morgan Levine, PhD
Assistant Professor of Pathology
Yale University School of Medicine
Nichole Lighthall, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Central Florida
Gerardo Marti, PhD
L. Richardson King Professor of Sociology
Department Chair
Davidson College
Teheran (Terry) Mills, PhD
Assistant Provost for Diversity and Inclusion
John Carroll University
Todd McCallum, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Psychological Sciences,
Case Western Reserve University
Brendan Miller, PhD
Kaoru Nashiro, PhD
Research Assistant Professor
Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California
James Nhan, PhD
Doctoral Student
Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California
Christy Nishita, PhD
Associate Specialist, University of Hawaii Center of Aging and Center on Disability Studies
Researcher and Gerontologist
Catherine Pérez, PhD
Gerontology Minor Coordinator,
Syracuse University
Margarita Maria Osuna Castellanos
Norella Putney, PhD
Lecturer, Sociology
California State University, Los Angeles
Amber Watts, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychology
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences,
The University of Kansas
Kristi Wisnieswski, PhD
Nicholas Woodward, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Keck School of Medicine,
University of Southern California
Linda Ann Wray, PhD
Associate Professor of Biobehavioral Health
The Pennsylvania State University
Yuan Zhang, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Carolina Population Center
Current positions may be out of date. Please check Google Search results or LinkedIn for most up-to-date positions for alumni.
Jennifer Ailshire, PhD
Associate Professor of Gerontology,
Leonard Davis School of Gerontology,
University of Southern California
Theresa Andrasfay, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar,
Leonard Davis School of Gerontology,
University of Southern California
Sarah Barber, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Georgia State University
Christopher Beam, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Department of Psychology
University of Southern California
Ryon Cobb, PhD
Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Arlington
Yeon Jin Choi, PhD
Mateo Farina, PhD
Assistant Professor at UT Austin
Kevin Feeney, PhD
Associate at Analysis Group in Boston, MA.
Calley Fisk
Postdoctoral Scholar
USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology
Megan Fitzhugh, PhD
Phoebe Imms, PhD
Senior Research Officer
QIMR Berghofer, Australia
Robert F. Kennison, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychology
California State University, Los Angeles
Andy Jeesu Kim
Postdoctoral Scholar
Eric Klopack, PhD
Assistant Professor, Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Indiana University
Aaron Lim
Postdoctoral Scientist
Keck School of Medicine of the USC
Uchechi Mitchell, PhD
Assistant Professor
Community Health Sciences
University of Illinois, Chicago
Haena Lee, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar – Research Associate
USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology
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Joseph Saenz, PhD
Assistant Professor
Leonard Davis School of Gerontology,
Anna Rahman, PhD
Research Assistant Professor
Leonard Davis School of Gerontology,
University of Southern California
Nicholas Resciniti, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Southern California
Chandra A. Reynolds, PhD
Professor of Psychology
University of California, Riverside
Sandra L. Reynolds, PhD
Emeritus Faculty
School of Aging Studies,
University of South Florida
Jennifer Robinette, PhD
Assistant Professor
Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences; Psychology
Chapman University
Hiram Beltran-Sanchez, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Community Health Sciences, UCLA
Connor Sheehan, PhD
Assistant Professor,
Arizona State University
