2017-2020 Trainees
- Martha Forloines is currently working with Dr. Joy Geng and Dr. Arne Ekstrom at UC Davis. Her research focuses on what neural correlates are recruited during successful navigation, and how this changes across the lifespan. Specifically, she uses virtual environments to test how participants use geometric and featural cues in their environments to successfully navigate toward a goal. Through the use of functional magnetic imaging, behavioral testing, and neuropsychological assessments, her goal is to determine what changes occur throughout normal aging as compared to disease states, such as MCI or AD, in order to better understand the course of abnormal cognitive aging.
- Silvia Hilt is currently working with Dr. John Voss at UC Davis. Her field of interest is in protein folding and the effect misfolding has on protein functions. Her specific interest in the Voss Lab is focused on apolipoprotein E, especially apolipoprotein E4, and how pathological conformations affects protein functions. She uses EPR (Electron Paramagnetic Resonance) spectroscopy and CD (Circular Dichroism) spectroscopy to determine conformational stability and protein interactions relevant to cardiovascular and Alzheimer's Disease.
- Zach Reagh is currently working with Dr. Charan Ranganath at UC Davis. His research is aimed at understanding how memory really works, rather than how it might work under a certain highly specific set of circumstances. Toward this end, he is using video and narrative stimuli to study how we organize memories in the face of incoming floods of multimodal information, and how bits of that information are represented in different cortico-hippocampal networks. He is also interested in studying memory decline with aging and Alzheimer's disease. His work at the UC Davis Alzheimer's center to ask whether deposition of Beta-Amyloid in the brain's posterior-medial system affects encoding and retrieval of information from continuous videos and narratives.
