People

Sandra Weiss, PhD, RN, FAAN

Principal Investigator
Community Health Systems

Dr. Weiss is the Robert C. and Delphine Wentland Eschbach Chair in Mental Health. Her program of research focuses on the interaction between biological and psychological factors as they impact the mental health of children and adults. She is currently examining precursors of emotion regulation and affective disorders in early childhood, including the ways in which genetic, neuroendocrine, and autonomic nervous system vulnerabilities interact with adverse events such as stress, trauma and parental depression during pregnancy and infancy.

Nina Ahlers, MPH

Access Extension

Dorothy Forde, PhD

Access Extension

Maryam Hamidi, PhD

Access Extension

Victoria Keeton, PhD, RN, PNP

Postdoc Scholar - Fellow

Dr. Keeton is a postdoctoral research fellow with the UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative and is working with the Weiss lab in the areas of maternal stress and social needs and their impact on maternal-child health. She completed her PhD in Nursing Science and Healthcare Leadership at the University of California, Davis, Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, and her MS in Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Keeton’s dissertation research explored associations between household social needs, maternal stress, and child emotional health, in Latinx families in San Francisco.

Cherry Leung, PhD, RN

Associate Professor
Community Health Systems

Dr. Cherry Leung is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health Systems. She received her M.S. and preparation as a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in Epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interest is disease prevention and mental health promotion of children and adolescents, with a primary focus on depression.

Becky Salomon, PhD, RN, NP

POSTDOC-FELLOW

Becky (Rebecca) Salomon, PhD, RN, PMHNP-BC completed her postdoctoral fellowship on the UCSF School of Nursing’s Biobehavioral Research Program in Symptom Science in 2021. In her research, she focuses on exposure to societal stressors and subsequent biological changes during pregnancy and early parenting. Becky received her doctorate in Nursing from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.