People

Center Director
Core Faculty
Staff
Core Collaborators
Past Trainees/Collaborators
Alumni

The AME Laboratory has many wonderful collaborations, including the collaboration with Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and Dr. Jue Lin, of the Blackburn Laboratory.

Center Director

Elissa Epel, PhD

Elissa Epel, Ph.D is a health psychologist focusing on stress pathways. For the past 15 years, she has studied stress in the lab and in the field, using common naturalistic stressors, and associations with an early aging syndrome. She examines how stress processes lead to early disease precursors, focusing on overeating, abdominal obesity, and immune cell aging. She has found that people’s propensity to be stress reactive, psychologically or in terms of cortisol reactivity, is associated with overeating, abdominal obesity, and accelerated cell aging.

Core Faculty

	Kirstin Aschbacher, PhD Dr. Kirstin Aschbacher has joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco in the Spring of 2012. She has been awarded a Patient-Oriented Career Development Award through the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and she is a fellow with The Institute for Integrative Health in Baltimore, MD. Her research focuses on mapping the direct physiological pathways from interpersonal and social stressors to cardiovascular disease, in order to develop interventions more specifically tailored to targeting these pathways. Read more...
	Aoife O'Donovan, PhD Dr. O'Donovan is currently a Society in Science: Branco Weiss Fellow at the University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco Veteran's Affairs Medical Center. Her research is focused on uncovering the mechanisms by which psychological experiences influence the development of age-related diseases. She is particularly interested in how psychosocial stress influences the biological aging process. Read more...
	Aric A. Prather, PhD Dr. Prather is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF. His research focuses on complex interactions between psychological processes and sleep as they relate to physical and mental illness. With expertise in psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), much of his research involves understanding how psychosocial factors affect the immune system, with emphasis on inflammatory pathways as a key biological mechanism. Read more...
	Eli Puterman, PhD Eli's research highlights the benefits of regular physical activity and social connections of those experiencing chronic stress in their lives. His work suggests that the stress-disease link can possibly be broken when people maintain a healthy physical activity regimen and close connections with others. Eli's current research, supported by a K99/R00 award from The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, will examine (1) the dynamic interplay between lifestyle factors and accumulation of life stress across adulthood to predict risk for cardiovascular disease and associated physiological weathering and (2) the cellular effects of an exercise intervention in chronically stressed individuals. Read more...

Staff

	Justine Arenander SAGE, Co-Project Director Justine Arenander is the Co-Project Director for the Stress, Aging, and Emotions (SAGE) Study for Parents. Prior to joining the Epel Lab, she coordinated pharmacokinetic interaction studies of opiate replacement therapies and HIV/TB medications at San Francisco General Hospital. She received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from UC Berkeley and is very interested in the intersection of mind and biology.
	Kim Coleman-Phox, MPH MAMAS, Project Director Kim Coleman-Phox is the project director of Dr. Epel's U01 grant, Novel Interventions to Reduce Non-homeostatic Eating, which includes the Maternal Adiposity, Metabolism and Stress (MAMAS) and Stress, Eating, and Hormones (SHE) Studies. She completed her MPH in Maternal Child Health at UC Berkeley. Her research interests include pregnancy, birth outcomes, and health disparities.
	Laura Kurtzman SAGE, Co-Project Director Laura Kurtzman is Co-Project Director of the Stress, Aging and Emotions Study for parents. She spent 20 years as a journalist in the Bay Area, writing about social issues, health care reform, and politics. She has a bachelor’s degree from Williams College and a masters in journalism from Columbia University. Her research interests include chronic stress, health behaviors, and aging.
	Stephanie L. Stoner Assistant to Elissa, Web Designer Stephanie is an Administrative Assistant in the Center for Health and Community and helps when and where she can with Elissa's research projects, particularly on the SHE and MAMAS Studies. Her favorite task is web design. She received her bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley in Marine Science, with a minor in Geography.

Core Collaborators

	Nancy Adler, PhD University of California, San Francisco Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics Director, Center for Health and Community Website
	Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD Morris Herzstein Endowed Chair in Biology & Physiology University of California, San Francisco Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics Website
	Nicki Bush, PhD University of California, San Francisco Department of Psychiatry
	David H. Chae, ScD, MA Emory University Rollins School of Public Health Website
	Firdhaus Dhabhar, PhD Stanford University School of Medicine Psychiatry and Behavioral Science
	Frederick (Rick) Hecht, MD University of California, San Francisco Osher Center for Integrative Medicine
	Eve Kupferman, PhD University of California, San Francisco Department of Psychiatry More Info...
	Barbara Laraia, MPH, RD, PhD University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health University of California, San Francisco Center for Health and Community Website
	Jue Lin, PhD
	Wendy Berry Mendes, PhD Sarlo/Ekman Associate Professor of Emotion University of California, San Francisco Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute Website
	Cliff Saron, PhD University of California, Davis Center for Mind and Brain MIND Institute Website: UC Davis MIND Institute
	Owen M. Wolkowitz, MD University of California, San Francisco Department of Psychiatry Website

Past Trainees/Collaborators

	Tanja Adam, PhD
	Annaliese Beery, PhD Smith College Departments of Psychology and Biology Website
	Jennifer Daubenmier, PhD University of California, San Francisco Osher Center for Integrative Medicine Department of Medicine Website
	Lisa Groesz, PhD Private Practice
	Emily Goard Jacobs, PhD University of California, San Francisco/University of California Berkeley Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholars Program Website
	Candyce Kroenke, PhD
	Shannon McCoy, PhD
	Belinda Needham, PhD University of Alabama Department of Sociology Website
	George M. Slavich, PhD University of California, Los Angeles Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research Website
	Janet Tomiyama, PhD University of California, Los Angeles Departments of Psychology Website

Alumni

	Jenna Carl
	Jessica Chan
	Katrina Koslov, PhD
	Alanie Lazaro
	Melanie Sun
	Hana Tylova-Stein
	Wendy Wolfson