Principal Investigator
Sandra J. Weiss, PhD
Dr. Weiss is a Professor in the Department of Community Health Systems at UCSF and the Robert C. and Delphine Wentland Eschbach Chair in Mental Health. She is also Co-Director of the UCSF Depression Center and an active Board Member of the National Network of Depression Centers (NNDC). In addition, she heads up a NIH-funded Biobehavioral Research Training Program in Symptom Science for PhD students and postdoctoral fellows. Sandra has PhD degrees in Biological and Developmental Psychology as well as in Nursing Science, with a specialty in Child and Family Mental Health. She is involved in collaborative research with other UCSF faculty in the Department of Psychiatry, the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, the Department of Medicine, and the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. Her program of research aims to characterize depression and stress, and to understand their mechanisms and impact, especially among women and very young children. She has 30 years of experience as a PI on multiple research grants that integrate biological, behavioral and psychological sources of data. Dr. Weiss is Principal Investigator of the various studies in our lab.
Co-Investigators
Cherry Leung, PhD
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. Cherry’s dissertation research involved the use of Hong Kong’s “Children of 1997” Birth Cohort, a population-representative Chinese birth cohort to facilitate the understanding of modifiable risk factors associated with child and adolescent mental health outcomes. As part of her research, she traced developmental trajectories of childhood behavioral problems and observed their associations with depressive symptoms. In her current, NIH-funded K award, she is characterizing the adolescent gut microbiota and examining the association of gut microbiota with depressive symptoms through mediation of the immune pathway. Dr. Leung is a Co-Investigator on our lab’s study: ‘Fetal Programming of the Microbiome and its Mediating Role in Infant Stress Dysregulation.’ During her previous postdoctoral fellowship, she also worked in the lab on our ‘‘Antenatal Corticosteroids, Maternal Depression and Preterm Infant Stress Response’ study.
Larry Rand, MD
Dr. Larry Rand is an Associate Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at UCSF. He is Principal Investigator of the UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative -California, a multi-year research effort funded by the Benioff Family Foundation. He is also the Director of Perinatal Services at the UCSF Fetal Treatment Center, diagnosing and treating birth defects in utero. As an obstetrician and gynecologist, he counsels and coordinates care and participates in prenatal diagnosis, specializing in procedures such as chorionic villus sampling (CVS), amniocentesis, intra-uterine transfusion and fetal biopsies. Larry’s research interest in maternal and fetal health has led him to study methods to reduce the global incidence of preterm labor and fetal disorders (heart defects, diabetes, neuroblastomas, and liver neoplasms, etc.), improve the pregnancy and treatment outcomes for monozygotic twins, and deliver pioneering care to turn the latest research from the bench into treatment at the bedside. Dr. Rand is a Co-Investigator on our NIH-funded study: ‘Antenatal Corticosteroids, Maternal Depression and Preterm Infant Stress Response.’
Owen Wolkowitz, MD
Dr. Owen Wolkowitz is a Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF, with a research focus on the mechanisms of stress-related mental illnesses and novel mechanism-based treatments. He has applied this line of investigation primarily to major depression but also to PTSD, dementia and schizophrenia, as well as to accelerated aging processes that accompany these conditions. He has extensive knowledge of biomarkers relevant to stress and depression, such as steroids and neurosteroids, telomere length and telomerase activity, oxidative stress, inflammation, neurotrophic factors, metabolomics and neuroimaging. Owen recognizes that complex bio-behavioral diseases such as depression require research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries and tightly integrates findings from the basic science lab with those from clinical investigations. Dr. Wolkowitz is Co-Director of the UCSF Depression Center with Dr. Weiss, where he fosters research collaborations among investigators in psychiatry, internal medicine, pharmacology, molecular and cellular biology, genetics, neuroimaging, neuroendocrinology, biochemistry, physiology, nursing, and psychology. He is a Co-Investigator on our NIH-funded study: ‘Antenatal Corticosteroids, Maternal Depression and Preterm Infant Stress Response.’
Project Coordinators/Project Directors
Sandy Niemann, PhD
Dr. Niemann is Project Director for our NIH study: ‘Antenatal Corticosteroids, Maternal Depression, and Preterm Infant Stress Response.’ After completing graduate degrees in the humanities at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Graduate Theological Union, she returned to school at UCSF to study infant mental health. Sandy’s dissertation research focused on attachment behavior in children adopted internationally and the roles of children’s stress levels and the quality of their previous institutional care in the security of the attachment they develop with their adoptive mothers. She also served as Project Coordinator for a study on emotion regulation in children born prematurely. Her current interest is the mechanisms through which early life experience contributes to affect development.
Sharon Kidd, PhD
Dr. Kidd is a perinatal and pediatric epidemiologist trained at the University of California, Berkeley. Sharon’s dissertation research focused on sleep and cortisol in preschool-aged children with autism and typically developing children. She is the Project Coordinator for the lab’s NIH-funded study: ‘Moderators of Maternal Depression’s Relationship to Mother-Infant Interaction.’ Prior to this work, Sharon was the National Coordinator for the Fragile X Clinical and Research Consortium (FXCRC), working on the FORWARD Project engaging 25 specialty clinics in data collection for more than 800 children with fragile X syndrome. Dr. Kidd’s interests are primarily in infant and childhood psychiatric morbidity, developmental disabilities, cortisol and alpha-amylase diurnal secretion, and mother-infant dyadic behavior.
Research Associates
Sarah Richoux, PhD(c)
Sarah is a Research Associate with our studies on ‘Moderators of Maternal Depression’s Relationship to Mother-Infant Interaction’ and ‘Antenatal Corticosteroids, Maternal Depression, and Preterm Infant Stress Response.’ Prior to working with the lab, Sarah has been involved in two previous studies: one was focused on postpartum fatigue and depressive symptoms, and the other on the context and impact of maternal sleep during the postpartum. She is currently in the PhD program in the School of Nursing, where her dissertation research is examining the effects of maternal perceived stress and maternal stress hormones during pregnancy on adverse birth outcomes for the infant.
Nina Ahlers, MPH
Nina is a Research Associate for our study on ‘Antenatal Corticosteroids, Maternal Depression, and Preterm Infant Stress Response.’ She graduated from École des Hautes Etudes en Santé Publique (EHESP French School of Public Health), with an emphasis in the environmental and occupational health sciences. Nina worked previously on a population-based study in Paris that identified environmental and social determinants of low birth weight at the neighborhood and individual levels. Because of her expertise in this area, Nina has a special interest in the social determinants that we are examining in our study. She speaks fluent Spanish, assuring that our Spanish-speaking participants are well-informed and actively engaged in the research.
Genesis Vasconez, BS, RN
Genesis Vasconez is a Research Associate for our ‘Antenatal Corticosteroids, Maternal Depression, and Preterm Infant Stress Response’ study. She received her BS in Biology emphasis in Phsyiology with minors in Chemistry and Business from San Francisco State University. She is currently in the UCSF School of Nursing Masters Psychiatric/Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Program. Genesis has been a research assistant for two previous studies, including one that focused on improving the quality of life for patients with schizophrenia and depression. Another study in which she was involved examined science-based teaching practice from childhood to adulthood. Her primary research interests are the interactions between biological and psychological factors as they impact children and youth. Like Nina, Genesis speaks fluent Spanish and has been a great resource to our Spanish-speaking participants.
Midori Nakajima, PhD
Dr. Nakajima is a Research Associate for two studies in our lab: ‘Moderators of Maternal Depression’s Relationship to Mother-Infant Interaction’ and ‘Antenatal Corticosteroids, Maternal Depression, and Preterm Infant Stress Response.’ Midori graduated from the UCSF School of Nursing’s Master’s Program (Adult Nurse Practitioner Program with a specialization in Psychiatric Nursing) and its PhD program in Nursing Science. Her dissertation research focused on interprofessional, collaborative practice in psychiatric settings. Her previous research has examined the impact of traumas such as tsunamis and radiation disaster on children and their families, as well as evaluation of clinical impact at a nursing faculty practice that cared for the mentally ill.
Sabra Bell
Sabra Bell is a research associate for our study on ‘Antenatal Corticosteroids, Maternal Depression, and Preterm Infant Stress Response.’ She is actively engaged in recruitment and data collection for the study. In addition to her work in our lab, Sabra is a Benioff Community Innovator with UCSF’s Preterm Birth Initiative, where she has conducted focus groups with women of color on their experiences of homelessness while pregnant. She is also currently a student at City College of San Francisco in the Community Health Worker program, with a concentration on the public determinants of health, client-centered care, and harm reduction. She hopes to pursue a career in research, with a special interest in the effects of housing instability on pregnant women.
Mina Cheema
Mina Cheema is a Research Associate for our ‘Antenatal Corticosteroids, Maternal Depression, and Preterm Infant Stress Response’ study. She received her BS in Psychology and Public Health from the University of Houston. In addition to her work in our lab, Mina is Clinical Research Coordinator of the Cellular Aging and Neurobiology of Depression study in the Psychiatry Department at UCSF. Her interests include stress, mental health and mindfulness interventions. Mina plans to continue research and pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology beginning in fall of 2019.
Cyrstal Epstein, PhD
Crystal is a postdoctoral fellow on the UCSF School of Nursing’s Biobehavioral Research Program in Symptom Science. She received her PhD in Nursing and MSN (Psychiatric Mental Health Speciality) from the University of Nebraska. Her research is focused on life course stress, adversity and depression in women during pregnancy and early parenting. Crystal's doctoral research was a mixed methods study of pregnant women examining psychosocial and biobehavioral adaptive responses to stress and adversity. She has previously worked on research projects focused on women’s health behaviors, qualitative methods, actigraphy, social networking, and integrative health care for children. Crystal is involved with our studies on ‘Moderators of Maternal Depression’s Relationship to Mother-Infant Interaction’ and ‘Antenatal Corticosteroids, Maternal Depression, and Preterm Infant Stress Response.’