Alzheimer’s Prevention Lab at UC San Diego
Welcome to the Alzheimer’s Prevention Laboratory directed by Dr. Judy Pa.
Our research is focused on identifying genetic and lifestyle risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and developing innovative interventions for improving brain and cognitive health in older adults. Using a combination of cognitive, behavioral, and neuroimaging techniques, our primary goal is Alzheimer’s prevention.
The Alzheimer’s Prevention Lab is an academic research lab at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and a part of the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS) and the Department of Neurosciences. Dr. Pa is Professor of Neurosciences and Co-Director of the ADCS and holds the Shiley Endowed Chair for Alzheimer’s Disease Research.
Recent News
Dr. Megan Fitzhugh is currently recruiting undergraduate interns to volunteer in her auditory, hearing, and dementia research lab. Email inquiries with resumes can be sent to: mfitzhugh@ucsd.edu. A 1-year commitment and minimum 8-10 hours/week are requested.
2025
The lab welcomes 2 new PhD students this fall: Andrea Gabay from the Clinical Psychology JDP and Emily Ager from the Public Health JDP - Health Behavior!
Big news to share that Dr. Megan Fitzhugh’s K22 Career Development Award has finally arrived! Congrats Dr. Fitzhugh!
Nancy Ortega (Neuroscience PhD student) is awarded the Elizabeth Young New Investigator Award at the annual OSSD conference!
Cynthia Nyongesa (Neuroscience PhD student) publishes her first first-author paper! on “Artificial intelligence-driven natural language processing for identifying linguistic patterns in Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment.”
Vahan graduates from USC with a PhD in Biostatistics! Congrats Dr. Aslanyan!
2024
“What If…?” Video - The Ann S. Bowers Women's Brain Health Initiative is driven by a radically simple idea: Progress in neuroscience will flourish when the health of men and women are valued equally.
2023
2022
Check out our lab’s posters presented July 31st – August 4th, 2022 at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) in San Diego, CA! Links to the posters are below:
Vahan Aslanyan was accepted into USC’s Biostatistics PhD program and will continue in the lab as a PhD student.
Nancy Ortega completed her first year rotations and officially joined our lab as a Neuroscience PhD student, while also earning a competitive NIH T32 fellowship.
Congratulations to Vahan and Nancy!
Drs. Judy Pa, Dan Albrecht and colleagues publish paper linking impaired cerebral blood flow and tau pathology
- October 15, 2020Check out our lab’s posters at the 2020 virtual Alzheimer’s conference with 35,000 attendees! Congratulations to Dan, Laura, Vahan, and Dr. Pa on a set of interesting studies of Alzheimer’s risk factors and brain imaging. Poster links are below”
Relationships between cerebrovascular health and tau PET uptake are associated with global cognition
Relationships between lifestyle factors, cerebral blood flow, and cognition in healthy older adults
Watch Dr. Judy Pa on Larry King Now in a segment on Alzheimer’s Disease: early-onset prevention, reducing risk and caring for loved ones - January 20, 2020
Judy Pa, PhD on MSNBC’s Morning Joe discusses how exercising the brain and body with virtual reality may help prevent cognitive decline - January 7, 2020
Judy Pa, PhD discusses the goal of the virtual reality project on Voices of America - September 19, 2019
Drs. Judy Pa and Albert “Skip” Rizzo from the USC Institute of Creative Technologies talk about the use of virtual reality for healthy aging - February 27, 2018
Research
Aging and Alzheimer’s disease
The United States is experiencing a rapid explosion in the number of older adults. Cognitive decline in older adults is a major public health issue due to its high prevalence and estimated cost at $203 billion per year. Therefore, understanding the brain changes associated with cognitive aging is of critical importance. Our ability to distinguish successful aging from mild cognitive impairment, a preclinical stage of dementia, remains limited. Identifying individuals with MCI is essential as they are at increased risk of progressing to dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
And it is even more important to identify individuals at risk for cognitive impairment as we know that neuropathology can accumulate decades before the onset of symptoms. While there are prospective disease-modifying treatments for Alzheimer’s disease on the horizon, there are still no effective diagnostic biomarkers. Brain imaging has emerged as a promising method for in vivo investigation of neural changes due to underlying neuropathology.
Meet the Team
DIRECTOR
Dr. Judy Pa
RESEARCH STAFF
Lisette Isenberg
Joey Contreras
Kimberly Espejo
Roshan Ravichandran
Emily Ager
Yilei Dong
Adam Gardner
Joshua Fierro
POST DOCTORAL SCHOLARS
Megan Fitzhugh
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Laura Fenton
Nancy Elizabeth Ortega
Joanna Eckhardt
Cynthia Nyongesa
Vahan Aslanyan
Marcella Barneclo
LAB ALUMNI
Ashwin Sakhare
Joy Stradford
Coralie Phanord
Positions
Our research is supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIH), foundation grants, and local university support.
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP (updated May 2025)
Applications are being accepted for an open postdoctoral fellow position with a focus on lifestyle factors and/or women’s brain health. Our research lab is located in La Jolla, CA in a state-of-the-art clinical research center. Successful candidates will have a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, neuroscience, psychology, physics, biomedical engineering, or a closely related discipline. Previous experience and track record in R, neuroimaging data analysis, and big data analytics are a plus.
UCSD PHD STUDENTS
We accept PhD students from the following graduate programs and anticipate accepting 1 student for Fall 2026 matriculation.
1. UCSD Neuroscience Graduate Program (NGP)
2. SDSU/UCSD Clinical Psychology Joint Doctoral Program (JDP)
Students with a strong interest in aging, interventions, and Alzheimer’s risk factors are encouraged to apply.
UCSD RESEARCH INTERNS AND UNDERGRADUATE WORK STUDY
UCSD students with an interest in aging, dementia, lifestyle factors, and women’s brain health are encouraged to contact me for available unpaid internships. Our students often come from majors in neuroscience, psychology, medicine, computational sciences, engineering, digital art, or exercise physiology. We are an interdisciplinary group and welcome those with common interests and passion.
All interested candidates should contact Dr. Judy Pa: jpa@health.ucsd.edu