Volunteers

Katelynn Nguyen
B.S., B.A.  |  Clinical Research Volunteer
nguyenk0323@gmail.com  

At the end of Winter Quarter 2021, I joined the Sajjadi Lab as an undergraduate volunteer. The following June, I graduated from UCLA with a B.S. in Psychobiology and a B.A. in Ethnomusicology. During my undergraduate years, I assisted in research centering on the structural biology and mechanism of protein aggregation involved in amyloid-related neurodegenerative diseases. My interest in Alzheimer’s began after I watched a documentary in fifth grade detailing Ronald Regan’s battle with the disease and after working with dementia patients in high school as part of the Music to Heal program. Following graduation, I transitioned to a Junior Specialist position to coordinate the Hippocampal Sclerosis project and continue my research interests in the Post Mortem MRI project. I hope to attend medical school in the near future to pursue my passions for neurology and medicine. 

 

 

Sam Gouron
B.S.  |  Clinical Research Volunteer
sgouron@hs.uci.edu

After graduating from UC San Diego in March of 2023 with a B.S. in Neurobiology and minors in Psychology and Philosophy, I joined the Sajjadi Lab as a volunteer in August 2023. At the lab I primarily work on the speech analysis project, which focuses on identifying acoustic and linguistic features of speech associated with CSF biomarkers of Alzheimer’s to aid in the early detection of cognitive impairment. I plan on attending medical school in the future so that I can one day practice in my field of passion: psychiatry.

 

 

Rojan Javaheri
B.S. | Clinical Research Volunteer
javaherr@hs.uci.edu

I graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.S. in Neuroscience with departmental honors and a minor in Piano Performance. My honors thesis focused on the impact of sex steroid hormones on Alzheimer’s pathology, for which I presented findings at the National Diversity in STEM 2023 Conference. To apply my understanding of dementia to clinical settings, I joined the Sajjadi Lab in 2021 and worked on the Limbic Predominant Age-Related TDP-43 Encephalopathy (LATE) projects. My current work focuses on using machine learning to analyze patient speech samples for dementia detection as well as understanding inflammatory processes in dementia for individuals over 90 years old. In the future, I plan to attend medical school and am interested in pursuing neurology or surgery.

 

 

Dennis Le
B.S. | Clinical Research Volunteer
dennisnl@uci.edu

I joined the Sajjadi Lab as a Bio 199 undergraduate research assistant towards the end of Fall Quarter 2023. My interest in neuroscience began after I first surveyed MCI/dementia-diagnosed patients with UCI Patient Experience. This led to me joining the lab to better understand the many causes of dementia and have a greater impact on the dementia-affected population. In the lab, my work primarily concerns spontaneous speech transcription for use in machine learning, which analyzes speech markers to make early dementia diagnosis more accessible. Outside of the lab, I am also part of the Free Clinic Project as the Head of Media and Marketing and as a Clinic Trainer. I plan to attend medical school so that I can pursue surgery.