Leadership
Directors
Mark Mapstone, PhD
Co-Director, CFAR-DS Professor and Vice Chair for Research, Department of Neurology
Mark Mapstone is Professor and Vice-Chair for Research in the Department of Neurology at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. He is a member of the UCI Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders and a Fellow of the UCI Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. His research focuses on pre-clinical detection of neurological disease using cognitive tests and biomarkers obtained from blood. He has a special interest in developing strategies to maintain successful cognitive aging. In the clinic, he s Chief of the Neuropsychology Division and specializes in cognitive assessment of older adults with suspected brain disease. Dr. Mapstone earned a PhD in Clinical Psychology at Northwestern University and completed fellowship training in Neuropsychology and Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Rochester. He received a Career Development Award from the National Institute on Aging and his research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and the Department of Defense.
Elizabeth Head, MA, PhD
Co-Director, CFAR-DS Professor and Vice Chair for Research, Department of Pathology
Dr. Head studied at the University of Toronto, Canada where she obtained her BSc, MA, and PhD in neuroscience in 1997 before moving to the University of California, Irvine and completing postdoctoral training in MIND. Until 2009, Dr. Head served as an Assistant Professor and Director of the Brain Tissue Repository for the UCI Alzheimer disease research center at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Head then became a Professor and Associate Director of Education at the University of Kentucky’s Sanders Brown Center on Aging where she established a Down syndrome aging and Alzheimer disease research study. In 2019, Dr. Head returned to the University of California, Irvine and resumed her position as Director of the Brain Tissue Repository and now also serves as a Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. In her free time, she enjoys video games, cooking and being with friends.
(she/her/hers)
UCI School of Medicine
Contact
cfar-ds@uci.edu
837 Health Sciences Rd Irvine CA 92697-4541
