Joshua Cheung
B.S.  |  Junior Specialist
joshukc2@uci.edu

I joined the Sajjadi Lab in the Fall quarter of 2023 as an undergraduate research assistant through the Bio 199 program. I am also currently working in Dr. Hirohito Ichii’s lab which has a focus on transplant surgery of the pancreas. I am currently planning to graduate from UCI with a B.S. in Pharmaceutical Sciences in the Spring quarter of 2024. My work in the lab primarily involves processing speech data for use in machine learning which can detect dementia early. I also aid in the processing of biomarker data obtained from the blood samples of adults with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), and dementia-related pathologies. I plan to pursue either a PharmD or an M.D. in the future. After graduation, I took on the role of Junior Specialist.

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. During this period, I worked on the speech analysis project, which focuses on identifying acoustic and linguistic features of speech associated with CSF biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease to aid in the early detection of cognitive impairment. By the end of 2024, I progressed to the Junior Specialist role, where I coordinate our neuroimaging of the oldest-old in addition to continuing my research on speech-based digital markers. I plan on attending medical school in the future so that I can one day practice in my field of passion: psychiatry.